Painting the Joy of Life in Death's Shadow

Story location
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/12/arts/design/12BROC.html

Painting the Joy of Life in Death's Shadow

By JOSHUA BROCKMAN
Joshua Brockman's most recent article for Arts & Leisure was about the exhibition ``Jewish Pioneers of New Mexico.''
Around Aug 12, 2001


SCOTTSDALE, ARIZ. -- INSIDE an adobe-walled oasis of palm trees and oleander, Fritz Scholder lives amid skulls and skeletons. In the garden, several of Mr. Scholder's sculptures feature skull-like heads. In the library, an 18th-century skull engraved with witchcraft symbols shares shelf space with books printed before 1500. Even the porch has been converted into a skull room, complete with a macabre place setting surrounded by Mexican Day of the Dead paraphernalia that spill from cabinets and rest on shelves and antique chairs.

Like much of the art created by Mr. Scholder, these skulls and skeletons exude an air of mystery. Their presence inside his home and studio is one of the many paradoxes the artist celebrates in his work across several mediums.

 In the studio, where a springtime visitor found the artist preparing for the show of new work that will be at the Chiaroscuro gallery in Santa Fe, N.M., until the end of this month, Mr. Scholder was working on "Not Alone No. 5," a 7-by-16-foot stretched canvas from which more than 160 skulls stare at the viewer from a black horizon. "When it is finished," Mr. Scholder said, "each skull will be individual. You will be able to see the personality of each skull."

 "Alone No. 5," its complement, features a single cranium floating at eye level on a large black canvas of the same dimensions. The two skull paintings, designed to face each other, form the most monumental work in the latest of Mr. Scholder's series, "Alone/Not Alone." A colorful and vibrant meditation on mortality, isolation and relationship, "Alone/Not Alone" combines two longstanding themes in Mr. Scholder's career: his rendering of iconic and dyadic figures and his depiction of skulls and skeletons.

 "I consider myself a natural optimist," he said, "which might be surprising, because I like the dark side of things. That's simply because of intellectual curiosity. I celebrate each day. I truly wake up happy every morning."

 There was indeed nothing dark in the demeanor of this portly 63-year-old artist with shoulder-length hair and a radiant smile, which suffuses his face and masks his shyness. When he leaves his solitary compound, he does so with a combination of panache and privacy, driving a gold 1979 Rolls-Royce fitted with tinted windows.

 Born in Breckenridge, Minn., the fifth Fritz in a family primarily of German ancestry, he grew up with a passion for collecting, which has informed his largely autobiographical art. Although his career has included etchings, aquatints, lithographs, monotypes, photographs, collages, sculpture and mixed media, he is best known for his paintings.

 A finished work is only one stage of Mr. Scholder's artistic journey. Before he begins a series, he delves into the subject matter, researching, reading, preparing. "It is the concept and the approach that is of value," he said. "With every painting, you learn. You have to keep open, and it's not easy walking the tightrope between discipline and accident."

 With a beachcomber's eye for the esoteric, he has amassed a living museum of artifacts that he uses as props or springboards for his series, which can be as memorable for their titles as for their subjects: "Mystery Woman," "Monster Love," "Shaman," "Conjuror," "Martyr."

 His dining room, a cabinet of curiosities, is packed with collections that include a two-headed calf, a shrunken human head >from Borneo and a vial filled with powdered mummy, a medieval remedy. Mr. Scholder's library evokes his paintings: the Egyptian sarcophagus, the mounted buffalo head and the wall of masks (surrounding a pair of portraits of the artist by Warhol) have all turned up in his canvases.

 The sarcophagus, as well as mummies of a child, a falcon, a puppy and a cat, are part of an extensive accumulation of Egyptian treasures. "Egypt is for me the most fascinating and important culture," Mr. Scholder said. "I like the fact that they made animals gods, whereas in our culture, we tend to be mean to animals." His affinity for animals is reflected in the zoo of taxidermic creatures scattered throughout his home, with a special emphasis on the buffalo: "I believe that every human should have a twin animal spirit, and the buffalo is mine," Mr. Scholder said, pointing out a complete specimen standing behind his bed. In 1975 he even fashioned a self-portrait called "Buffalo Artist."

 Animal and human forms are also commingled in the "Alone/Not Alone" series. Its painted figures, like many of Mr. Scholder's sculptures, are asymmetrical, with one or no arms, one eye, or a combination of human and animal limbs. In "Alone No. 2," a creature set against an explosive red and violet horizon has one arm, one human foot, one cloven foot and rudimentary horns protruding from a partially masked head.

 "It's not necessarily the Devil," Mr. Scholder explained. "It could be a clone. It's of course another portrait of me. Most of the figures are. I paint myself in many guises. It's all unconscious. I don't think about it until years later."

 The "Not Alone" paintings focus on the interplay between a male figure and a female. "Almost every painting worthwhile has secrets, as far as I'm concerned," Mr. Scholder said while showing a visitor "Not Alone No. 2," an encounter between a woman and a dark shadow figure covered with burnt-orange spots.

 "Alone/Not Alone," which opened on Aug. 1, comes at an introspective time for Mr. Scholder. Nazraeli Press has just published a retrospective book, "Fritz Scholder: Paintings," which includes an example of nearly every series he has produced since 1960. "Last Portraits," an exhibition focusing on his substantial array of skull and skeleton art, will open in October at the Tweed Museum of Art at the University of Minnesota in Duluth.

 This Wednesday in Santa Fe, the Institute of American Indian Arts will dedicate a museum gallery in Mr. Scholder's honor. It was while teaching painting at the institute, in 1967, that he began the controversial "Indian" series that propelled his career. Although one of his grandmothers was a Native American from the Luiseño tribe in California, Mr. Scholder said, he grew up "a non-Indian." Still, his innovative approach, based on observation and historical research, repudiated traditional, sentimentalized renderings of mythic Indians. "I have painted the Indian real, not red," he wrote in 1972 of his work from this era. Mr. Scholder said he was the first artist to paint an Indian wrapped in an American flag, a motif that has found its way into Native American imagery. He said he had based the image on 19th-century prison photographs of Indians dressed in surplus flags in lieu of their confiscated tribal regalia. "I was very aware of the irony that had never been depicted," he recalled.

 His numerous series on Native American themes, created between 1967 and the 1990's, still resonate. In an essay for "Fritz Scholder: Paintings," Frank H. Goodyear Jr., the director of the Heard Museum in Phoenix, wrote of these works: "Scholder has achieved this sense of turning the pages of Indian history and, at the same time, has made some of his most strikingly contemporary images." Indeed, the covers of Louise Erdrich's latest novel, "The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse," and new editions of her previous books feature paintings from Mr. Scholder's "Indian" series.

 Mr. Scholder's favorite subject, however, is women. In "Thoughts at Night," a self- published book coupling his art and prose, Mr. Scholder wrote: "Love and passion make up the creative energy for the artist." And women are a constant presence throughout his many series. Paul Karlstrom, the West Coast regional director for the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art, wrote in the retrospective book: "For him, they embody and encompass all of human experience, >from birth through love to death."

 For his "Mystery Woman" series, Mr. Scholder found inspiration in his own backyard, placing female models in his pool and painting them in images that recalled David Hockney's. The dreamlike floating figures of Chagall found analogues in the levitating bodies prominent in Mr. Scholder's "Millennium" series. Mr. Scholder's paintings "Floating Red Shoe" and "Floating Brushes" celebrated mundane objects with a sensibility akin to that of Wayne Thiebaud, a mentor with whom Mr. Scholder studied at Sacramento City College in 1957. Mr. Scholder's style also reveals the influence of Francis Bacon, Goya, Gauguin and Edvard Munch.

 In his essay, Mr. Goodyear compared Mr. Scholder's work to that of many American painters of his generation. "Scholder's art lies between two counter-aesthetics — the dynamic bravado of Abstract Expressionism and the hard realism of Pop Art," Mr. Goodyear wrote. Others have called his style symbolist or colorist. But Mr. Scholder describes his art as "American expressionist."

 "An expressionist is one who celebrates paint," he said. "Paint drips, it smears. It's not because I'm trying to fool anyone into thinking this is a three-dimensional object on a two-dimensional surface," Mr. Scholder said, gesturing toward the skulls on the black canvas in his studio.

 For him, painting is both a magical and sensual encounter that brings together the tensile, responsive canvas; the soft, flexible brushes and the wet, buttery paint. "It's a turn-on," he said. "But it's also terribly serious, because it is in a way one of the universal rituals of making a mark on something that will last longer than you."

 Mr. Scholder's dedication to his artistic afterlife has led him to design his own posters, postcards, catalogs and books. "Documentation is very important because it lasts longer than any show," he said. What's more, he maintains a sizable collection of his own work, typically holding on to favorites from his series. But, he said, "my most favorite painting is the one I'm going to do next."

Napoleon's Will

I have always marvelled at Napoleon's attention to detail. And I also marvel at how big his Contact List was, and how many people he did remember even at the end of his days.
 
Story location
http://www.napoleonguide.com/napwill.htm

Napoleon's Will

NAPOLEON.
This 15th April, 1821, at Longwood, Island of St. Helena.

This is my Testament, or act of my last will.

1. I DIE in the Apostolical Roman religion, in the bosom of which I was born more than fifty years since.

2. It is my wish that my ashes may repose on the banks of the Seine, in the midst of the French people, whom I have loved so well.

3. I have always had reason to be pleased with my dearest wife, Maria Louisa. I retain for her, to my last moment, the most tender sentiments-I beseech her to watch, in order to preserve, my son from the snares which yet environ his infancy.

4. I recommend to my son never to forget that he was born a French prince, and never to allow himself to become an instrument in the hands of the triumvirs who oppress the nations of Europe: he ought never to fight against France, or to injure her in any manner; he ought to adopt my motto: "Everything for the French people."

5. I die prematurely, assassinated by the English oligarchy and its tool. The English nation will not be slow in avenging me.

6. The two unfortunate results of the invasions of France, when she had still so many resources, are to be attributed to the treason of Marmont, Augereau, Talleyrand, and La Fayette. I forgive them--May the posterity of France forgive them as I do.

7. I thank my good and most excellent mother, the Cardinal, my brothers, Joseph, Lucien, Jerome, Pauline, Caroline, Julie, Hortense, Catarine, Eugene, for the interest they have continued to feel for me. I pardon Louis for the libel he published in 1820: it is replete with false assertions and falsified documents.

8. I disavow the "Manuscript of St. Helena," and other works, under the title of Maxims, Sayings, &c., which persons have been pleased to publish for the last six years. Such are not the rules which have guided my life. I caused the Duc d'Enghien to be arrested and tried, because that step was essential to the safety, interest, and honour of the French people, when the Count d'Artois was maintaining, by his own confession, sixty assassins at Paris. Under similar circumstances, I should act in the same way.

II.

1. I bequeath to my son the boxes, orders, and other articles; such as my plate, field-bed, saddles, spurs, chapel-plate, books, linen which I have been accustomed to wear and use, according to the list annexed

(A). It is my wish that this slight bequest may he dear to him, as coming from a father of whom the whole world will remind him.

2. I bequeath to Lady Holland the antique Cameo which Pope Pius VI. gave me at Tolentino.

3. I bequeath to Count Montholon, two millions of francs, as a proof of my satisfaction for the filial attentions be has paid me during six years, and as an indemnity for the loses his residence at St. Helena has occasioned him.

4. I bequeath to Count Bertrand, five hundred thousand francs.

5. I bequeath to Marchand, my first valet-de-chambre; four hundred thousand francs. The services he has rendered me are those of a friend; it is my wish that he should marry the widow sister, or daughter, of an officer of my old Guard.

6. Item. To St. Denis, one hundred thousand francs.

7. Item. To Novarre (Noverraz,) one hundred thousand francs.

8. Item. To Pielon, one hundred thousand francs.

9. Item. To Archambaud, fifty thousand francs.

10. Item. To Cursot, twenty-five thousand francs.

11. Item. To Chandellier, twenty-five thousand francs.

12. To the Abbé Vignali, one hundred thousand francs. It is my wish that he should build his house near the Ponte Novo di Rostino.

13. Item. To Count Las Cases, one hundred thousand francs.

14. Item. To Count Lavalette, one hundred thousand francs.

15. Item. To Larrey, surgeon-in-chief, one hundred thousand francs.--He is the most virtuous man I have known.

16. Item. To General Brayher, one hundred thousand francs.

17. Item. To General Le Fevre Desnouettes one hundred thousand francs.

18. Item. To General Drouot, one hundred thousand francs.

19. Item. To General Cambrone, one hundred thousand francs.

20. Item. To the children of General Mouton Duvernet, one hundred thousand francs.

21. Item. To the children of the brave Labedoyère, one hundred thousand francs.

22. Item. To the children of General Girard, killed at Ligny, one hundred thousand francs.

23. Item. To the children of General Chartrand one hundred thousand francs.

24. Item. To the children of the virtuous General Travot, one hundred thousand francs.

25. Item. To General Lallemand the elder, one hundred thousand francs.

26. Item. To Count Real, one hundred thousand francs.

27. Item. To Costa de Bastelica, in Corsica, one hundred thousand francs.

28. Item. To General Clausel, one hundred thousand francs.

29. Item. To Baron de Mennevalle, one hundred thousand francs.

30. Item. To Arnault, the author of Marius, one hundred thousand francs.

31. Item. To Colonel Marbot, one hundred thousand francs.--I recommend him to continue to write in defence of the glory of the French armies, and to confound their calumniators and apostates.

32. Item. To Baron Bignon, one hundred thousand francs.--I recommend him to write the history of French diplomacy from 1792 to 1815.

33. Item. To Poggi di Talavo, one hundred thousand francs.

34. Item. To surgeon Emmery, one hundred thousand francs.

35. These sums will be raised from the six millions which I deposited on leaving Paris in 1815; and from the interest at the rate of 5 per cent. since July 1815. The account thereof will be settled with the banker by Counts Montholon and Bertrand, and Marchand.

36. Whatever that deposit may produce beyond the sum of five million six hundred thousand francs, which have been above disposed of, shall he distributed as a gratuity amongst the wounded at the battle of Waterloo, and amongst the officers and soldiers of the battalion of the Isle of Elba, according to a scale to be determined upon by Montholon, Bertrand, Drouot, Cambrone, and the surgeon Larrey.

37. These legacies, in case of death, shall be paid to the widows and children, and in default of such, shall revert to the bulk of my property.

III.

1. My private domain being my property, of which I am not aware that any French law has deprived me, an account of it will be required from the Baron de la Rouillerie, the treasurer thereof: it ought to amount to more than two hundred millions of francs; namely,

1. The portfolio containing the savings which I made during fourteen years out of my civil list, which savings amounted to more than twelve millions per annum, if my memory be good.

2. The produce of this portfolio.

3. The furniture of my palaces, such as it was in 1814, including the palaces of Rome, Florence, and Turin. All this furniture was purchased with moneys accruing from the civil list.

4. The proceeds of my houses in the kingdom of Italy, such as money, plate, jewels, furniture, equipages; the accounts of which will be rendered by Prince Eugene and the steward of the Crown, Campagnoni.

NAPOLEON. (Second Sheet.)

2. I bequeath my private domain, one half to the surviving officers and soldiers of the French army who have fought since 1792 to 1815, for the glory and the independence of the nation, the distribution to be made in proportion to their appointments upon active service; and one half to the towns and districts of Alsace, Lorraine, Franche-Comté, Burgundy, the Isle of France, Champagne Forest, Dauphiné, which may have suffered by either of the invasions. There shall be previously set apart from this sum, one million for the town of Brienne, and one million for that of Méri. I appoint Counts Montholon and Bertrand, and Marchand, the executors of my will. This present will, wholly written with my own hand, is signed and sealed with my own arms.

NAPOLEON. (L. S.) List (A).

Annexed to my Will. Longwood, Island of St. Helena, this, 15th April, 1821.

I.

1. The consecrated vessels which have been in use at my Chapel at Longwood.

2. I direct Abbé Vignali to preserve them, and to deliver them to my son when he shall reach the age of sixteen years.

II.

1. My arms; that is to say, my sword, that which I wore at Austerlitz, the sabre of Sobiesky, my dagger, my broad sword, my hanger, my two pair of Versailles pistols.

2. My gold dressing-case, that which I made use of on the morning of Ulm and of Austerlitz, of Jena, of Eylau, of Friedland, of the Island of Lobau, of the Moskwa, of Montmirail. In this point of view it is my wish that it may be precious in the eyes of my son. (It has been deposited with Count Bertrand since 1814.)

3. I charge Count Bertrand with the care of preserving these objects, and of conveying them to my son when he shall attain the age of sixteen years.

III .

1. Three small mahogany boxes, containing, the first, thirty-three sluff-boxes or comfit-boxes; the second, twelve boxes with the Imperial arms, two small eye-glasses, and four boxes found on the table of Louis XVIII. in the Tuileries, on the 20th of March, 1815; the third, three snuff-boxes ornamented with silver medals habitually used by the Emperor, and sundry articles for the use of the toilet, according to the lists numbered I. II. III.

2. My field-beds, which I used in all my campaigns.

3. My field-telescope.

4. My dressing-case, one of each of my uniforms, a dozen of shirts, and a complete set of each of my dresses, and generally of every thing used in my toilet.

5. My wash-hand stand.

6. A small clock which is in my bed-chamber at Longwood.

7. My two watches, and the chain of the Empress's hair.

8. I entrust the care of these articles to Marchand, my principal valet-de-chambre, and direct him to convey them to my son when he shall attain the age of sixteen years.

IV.

1. My cabinet of medals.

2. My plate, and my Sevres china, which I used at St. Helena. (List B. and C.)

3. I request Count Montholon to take care of these articles and to convey them to my son when he shall attain the age of sixteen years.

V.

1. My three saddles and bridles, my spurs which I used at St. Helena.

2. My fowling-pieces, to the number of five.

3. I charge my chasseur, Noverraz, with the care of these articles, and direct him to convey them to my son when he shall attain the age of sixteen years.

VI.

1. Four hundred volumes, selected from those in my library of which I have been accustomed to use the most.

2. I direct St. Denis to take care of them, and to convey them to my son when he shall attain the age of sixteen years.

NAPOLEON.

List (A).

1. None of the articles which have been used by me shall be sold; the residue shall be divided amongst the executors of my will and my brothers.

2. Marchand shall preserve my hair, and cause a bracelet to be made of it, with a little gold clasp, to be sent to the Empress Maria Louisa, to my mother, and to each of my brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces, the Cardinal; and one of larger size for my son.

3. Marchand will send one pair of my gold shoe-buckles to Prince Joseph.

4. A small pair of gold knee-buckles to Prince Lucien.

5. A gold collar-clasp to Prince Jerome.

List (A)

Inventory of my effects, which Marchand will take care of, convey to my son.

1. My silver dressing-case, that which is on my table, furnished with all its utensils, razors, &c.

2. My alarum-clock: it is the alarum-clock of Frederic II. which I took at Potsdam (in box No. III.).

3. My two watches, with the chain of the Empress's hair and a chain of my own hair for the other watch: Marchand will get it made at Paris.

4. My two seals (one the seal of France, contained in box No. III.).

5. The small gold clock which is now in my bed-chamber.

6. My wash-hand-stand and its water-jug.

7. My night-tables, those used in France, and my silver-gilt bidet.

8. My two iron bedsteads, my mattresses, and my coverlets, if they can be preserved.

9. My three silver decanters, which held my eau-de-vie., and which my chasseurs carried in the field.

10. My French telescope.

11. My spurs, two pair.

12. Three mahogany boxes, Nos. I. II. III., containing my snuff-boxes and other articles.

13. A silver-gilt perfuming pan. Here follow lists of Body Linen and Clothes, too minute to claim insertion in this place.

List (B).

Inventory of the Effects which I left in the possession of Monsieur the Count de Turenne.

One Sabre of Sobiesky. (It is, by mistake, inserted in List (A.) that being the sabre which the Emperor wore at Aboukir, and which is in the hands of Count Bertrand.)

One Grand Collar of the Legion of Honour. One sword of silver-gilt. One Consular sword. One sword of steel. One velvet belt. One Collar of the Golden Fleece. One small dressing-case of steel. One night-lamp of silver. One handle of an antique sabre. One hat à la Henry IV. and a toque. (A velvet hat, with a flat crown, and brims turned up.)

The lace of the Emperor. One small cabinet of medals. Two Turkey carpets. Two mantles of crimson velvet, embroidered, with vests, and small-clothes.

I give to my Son the sabre of Sobiesky. I give to my Son the collar of the Legion of Honour. I give to my Son the sword silver gilt. I give to my Son the Consular Sword. I give to my Son the steel sword. I give to my Son the collar of the Golden Fleece. I give to my Son the hat à la Henry IV. and the toque. I give to my Son the golden dressing-case for the teeth, which is in the hands of the dentist.

To the Empress Maria Louisa, my lace.

To Madame, the silver night-lamp.

To the Cardinal, the small steel dressing-case.

To Prince Eugene, the wax-candle-stick, silver gilt.

To the Princess Pauline, the small cabinet of medals.

To the Queen of Naples, a small Turkey carpet. To the Queen Hortense, a small Turkey carpet.

To Prince Jerome, the handle of the antique sabre.

To Prince Joseph, an embroidered mantle, vest, and small-clothes.

To Prince Lucien, an embroidered mantle, vest, and small-clothes.

NAPOLEON.

 

Napoleon's Tomb This 24th April, 1821, Longwood.

This is my Codicil or act of my last Will.

Upon the funds remitted in gold to the Empress Maria Louisa, my very dear and well- beloved spouse, at Orleans, in 1814, she remains in my debt two millions, of which I dispose by the present Codicil, for the purpose of recompensing my most faithful servants, whom moreover I recommend to the protection of my dear Maria Louisa.

1. I recommend to the Empress to cause the income of thirty thousand francs, which Count Bertrand possessed in the Duchy of Parma, and upon the Mont Napoleon at Milan, to be restored to him, as well as the arrears due.

2. I make the same recommendation to her with regard to the Duke of Istria, Duroc's daughter, and others of my servants who have continued faithful to me, and who have never ceased to be dear to me: she knows them.

3. Out of the above-mentioned two millions I bequeath three hundred thousand francs to Count Bertrand, of which he will lodge one hundred thousand in the treasurer's chest to be employed in legacies of conscience, according to my dispositions.

4. I bequeath two hundred thousand francs to Count Montholon, of which he will lodge one hundred thousand in the treasurer's chest, for the same purpose as above-mentioned.

5. Item, two hundred thousand francs to Count Las Cases, of which he will lodge one hundred thousand in the treasurer's chest, for the same purpose as above-mentioned.

6. Item, to Marchand one hundred thousand francs, of which he will place fifty thousand in the treasurer's chest, for the same purpose as above-mentioned.

7. To Jean Jerome Levi, the Mayor of Ajaccio at the commencement of the Revolution, or to his widow, children, or grand-children, one hundred thousand francs.

8. To Duroc's daughter, one hundred thousand francs.

9. To the son of Bessières, Duke of Istria, one hundred thousand francs.

10. To General Drouot, one hundred thousand francs.

11. To Count Lavalette, one hundred thousand francs.

12. Item, one hundred thousand francs; that is to say:-- Twenty-five thousand to Piéron, my maître d'hôtel. Twenty-five thousand to Novarre, my chasseur. Twenty-five thousand to St. Denis, the keeper of my books. Twenty-five thousand to Santini, my former door-keeper.

13. Item, one hundred thousand francs; that is to say:-- Forty thousand to Planat, my orderly officer. Twenty thousand to Hébert, lately house-keeper of Rambouillet, and who belonged to my chamber in Egypt. Twenty thousand to Lavigné, who was lately keeper of one of my stables, and who was my piqueur in Egypt. Twenty thousand to Jeanet Dervieux, who was overseer of the stables, and served me in Egypt.

14. Two hundred thousand francs shall be distributed in alms to the inhabitants of Brienne-le-Château, who have suffered most.

15. The three hundred thousand francs remaining shall be distributed to the officers and soldiers of the battalion of my guard at the Island of Elba who may be now alive, or to their widows and children, in proportion to their appointments, and according to an estimate which shall be fixed by my testamentary executors: those who have suffered amputation, or have been severely wounded, shall receive double; the estimate to be fixed by Larrey and Emmery.

This codicil is written entirely with my own hand, signed, and sealed with my arms.

NAPOLEON.

This 24th of April. 1821, Longwood. This is my Codicil, or note of my last Will.

Out of the settlement of my civil list of Italy, such as money, jewels, plate, linen, equipages, of which the Viceroy is the depositary, and which belonged to me, I dispose of two millions, which I bequeath to my most faithful servants.

I hope that, without availing himself of any reason to the contrary, my son Eugene Napoleon will pay them faithfully. He cannot forget the forty millions which I gave him in Italy, and in the distribution of the inheritance of his mother.

1. Out of these two millions, I bequeath to Count Bertrand three hundred thousand francs, of which he will deposit one hundred thousand in the treasurer's chest, to be disposed of according to my dispositions in payment of legacies of conscience.

2. To Count Montholon, two hundred thousand francs, of which he will deposit one hundred thousand in the chest, for the same purpose as above-mentioned.

3. To Count Las Cases, two hundred thousand francs, of which he will deposit one hundred thousand in the chest, for the same purpose as above-mentioned.

4. To Marchand, one hundred thousand francs, of which he will deposit fifty thousand in the chest, for the same purpose as above-mentioned.

5. To Count La Valette, one hundred thousand francs.

6. To General Hogendorf, of Holland, my aide-de-camp, who has retired to the Brazils, one hundred thousand francs.

7. To my aide-de-camp, Corbineau, fifty thousand francs.

8. To my aide-de-camp, General Caffarelli, fifty thousand francs.

9. To my aide-de-camp, Dejean, fifty thousand francs.

10. To Percy, surgeon-in-chief at Waterloo, fifty thousand francs.

11. Fifty thousand francs; that is to say:-- Ten thousand to Piéron, my maître d'hôtel. Ten thousand to St. Denis, my head chasseur. Ten thousand to Noverraz. Ten thousand to Cursot, my clerk of the kitchen. Ten thousand to Archamband, my piqueur.

12. To Baron De Mennevalle, fifty thousand francs.

13. To the Duke d'Istria, son of Bessières, fifty thousand francs.

14. To the daughter of Duroc, fifty thousand francs.

15. To the children of Labedoyère, fifty thousand francs.

16. To the children of Mouton Duvernet, fifty thousand francs.

17. To the children of the brave and virtuous General Travot, fifty thousand francs.

18. To the children of Chartrand, fifty thousand francs.

19. To General Cambrone, fifty thousand francs.

20. To General Lefevre Desnouettes, fifty thousand francs.

21. To be distributed amongst such proscribed persons as wander in foreign countries, whether they be French, Italian, Belgians, Dutch, Spanish, or inhabitants of the departments of the Rhine, under the directions of my executors, and upon their orders, one hundred thousand francs. 22. To be distributed amongst those who suffered amputation or were severely wounded at Lingy or Waterloo, who may be still living, according to lists drawn up by my executors, to whom shall be added Cambrone, Larrey, Percy, and Emmery. The guards shall be paid double; those of the Island of Elba, quadruple; two hundred thousand francs.

This codicil is written entirely with my own hand, signed, and sealed with my arms.

NAPOLEON.

This 24th of April, 1821, at Longwood.

This is my third Codicil to my Will of the 15th of April.

1. Amongst the diamonds of the Crown which were delivered up in 1814, there were some to the value of five or six hundred thousand francs, not belonging to it but which formed part of my private property; repossession shall be obtained of them in order to discharge my legacies.

2. I had in the hands of the banker Torlonia, at Rome, bills of exchange to the amount of two or three hundred thousand francs the product of my revenues of the Island of Elba since 1815. The Sieur De la Perruse, although no longer my treasurer, and not invested with any character, possessed himself of this sum. He shall be compelled to refund it.

3. I bequeath the Duke of Istria three hundred thousand francs of which only one hundred thousand francs shall be reversible to his widow, should the Duke be dead before payment of the legacy. It is my wish, should there be no inconvenience in it, that the Duke may marry Duroc's daughter.

4. I bequeath to the Duchess of Frioul, the daughter of Duroc, two hundred thousand francs: should she be dead before the payment of this legacy, none of it shall be given to the mother.

5. I bequeath to General Rigaud, (to him who was proscribed one hundred thousand francs.

6. I bequeath to Boisnod, the intendant commissary, one hundred thousand francs.

7. I bequeath to the children of General Letort, who was killed in the campaign of 1815, one hundred thousand francs.

8. These eight hundred thousand francs of legacies shall be considered as inserted at the end of Article thirty-six of my testament, which will make the legacies I have disposed of by will amount to the sum of six million four hundred thousand francs, without including the donations I have made by my second codicil.

This is written with my own hand, signed, and sealed with my arms. (L. S.)

NAPOLEON.

[On the outside is written:]

This is my third codicil to my will, entirely written with my own hand, signed, and sealed with my arms. To be opened the same day, and immediately after the opening of my will.

NAPOLEON.

This 24th of April, 1821. Longwood. This is a fourth Codicil to my Testament.

By the dispositions we have heretofore made, we have not fulfilled all our obligations, which has decided us to make this fourth codicil. l. We bequeath to the son or grandson of Baron Duthiel, lieutenant-general of artillery, and formerly lord of St. André, who commanded the school of Auxonne before the Revolution, the sum of one hundred thousand francs, as a memento of gratitude for the care which that brave general took of us when we were lieutenant and captain under his orders.

2. Item. To the son or grandson of General Dugomier, who commanded in chief the army of Toulon, the sum of one hundred thousand francs. We, under his orders, directed that siege, and commanded the artillery: it is a testimonial of remembrance for the marks of esteem, affection, and friendship, which that brave and intrepid general gave us.

3. Item. We bequeath one hundred thousand francs to the son or grandson of the deputy of the Convention, Gasparin, representative of the people at the army of Toulon, for having protected and sanctioned with his authority the plan we had given, which procured the capture of that city, and which was contrary to that sent by the Committee of Public Safety. Gasparin, by his protection, sheltered us from the persecution and ignorance of the general officers who commanded the army before the arrival of my friend Dugomier.

4. Item. We bequeath one hundred thousand francs to the widow, son, or grandson, of our aide-de-camp Muiron, killed at our side at Arcola, covering us with his body.

5. Item. Ten thousand francs to the subaltern officer Cantillon, who has undergone a trial upon the charge of having endeavoured to assassinate Lord Wellington, of which he was pronounced innocent. Cantillon has as much right to assassinate that oligarchist as the latter had to send me to perish upon the rock of St. Helena. Wellington, who proposed this outrage, attempted to justify it by pleading the interest of Great Britain. Cantillon, if he had really assassinated that lord, would have pleaded the same excuse, and been justified by the same motive--the interest of France--to get rid of this General, who, moreover, by violating the capitulation of Paris, had rendered himself responsible for the blood of the martyrs Ney, Labeoyere, &c.: and for the crime of having pillaged the museums, contrary to the text of the treaties.

6. These four hundred thousand francs shall be added to the six million for hundred thousand of which we have disposed, and will make our legacies amount to six million eight hundred and ten thousand francs; these four hundred and ten thousand are to be considered as forming part of our testament, Article 36, and to follow in every respect the same course as the other legacies.

7. The nine thousand pounds sterling which we gave to Count and Countess Montholon, should, if they have been paid, be deducted and carried to the account of the legacies which we have given him by our testament. If they have not been paid, our notes of hand shall be annulled.

8. In consideration of the legacy given by our will to Count Montholon, the pension of twenty thousand francs granted to his wife is annulled. Count Montholon is charged with the payment of it to her.

9. The administration of such an inheritance, until its final liquidation, requiring expenses of offices, journeys, missions, consultations, and lawsuits, we expect that our testamentary executors shall retain 3 per cent. upon all the legacies, as well upon the six million eight hundred thousand francs, as upon the sums contained in the codicils, and upon the two hundred millions of francs of the private domain.

10. The amount of the sums thus retained shall be deposited in the hands of a treasurer, and disbursed by drafts from our testamentary executors.

11. Should the sums arising from the aforesaid deductions not be sufficient to defray the expenses, provisions shall be made to that effect at the expense of the three testamentary executors and the treasurer, each in proportion to the legacy which we have bequeathed to them in our will and codicils.

12. Should the sums arising from the before-mentioned subtractions be more than necessary, the surplus shall be divided amongst our three testamentary executors and the treasurer, in the proportion of their respective legacies.

13. We nominate Count Las Cases, and in default of him his son, and in default of the latter, General Drouot, to be treasurer.

This present codicil is entirely written with our hand, signed, and sealed with our arms.

NAPOLEON.

The Key to My Father - Father's Day Burial

Story location
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/15/opinion/...nted=print&position=

The Key to My Father
By HARLAN COBEN
Harlan Coben is author, most recently, of "No Second Chance."
June 15, 2003

Let's get something straight right away: my father was hopelessly unhip. He was the corporeal embodiment of an Air Supply eight-track. He'd come home from work, shed the powder-blue suit with reversible vest, the tie so polyester it would melt during heat waves, the V-neck Hanes undershirt of startling white, the gray socks bought by the dozen at Burlington Coat Factory. He'd don a logo T-shirt that was compulsorily a size too snug, if you know what I mean, and shorts that were, uh, short, like something John McEnroe wore at Wimbledon in 1979.

His sunglasses were big, too big. They might have worked on Sophia Loren but on Dad they looked like manhole covers.

He had thin legs. My mom teased him about this, this 6-foot-2 man with the barrel chest and olive skin, teetering on spindly legs. His hair, as described by my mother, was "tired," wispy and flyaway. He had big arms. To his children, they looked like oak branches. The biceps would grow spongy with the years. But they never had time to fully atrophy.

He would play ball with us, but he was a terrible athlete.

I remember going to that Little League coaches' softball game, the one they have at the end of every season, and watching my father -- this man who had taught me to keep my elbow up and back foot planted -- take to the plate and ground out weakly to third. Three times in a row. To his credit, he never made excuses. "You," he'd tell me. "You're an athlete. Me, I'm a spaz."

His after-shave was Old Spice. There had been a radical period when he tried an eau called Royal Copenhagen -- someone had given him a gift set and damned if he was going to let it go to waste -- but he veered back onto his Old Spice route. That is still my strongest bar mitzvah recollection -- that smell.

No, I can't tell you what part of the haphtara I recited from the pulpit of B'nai Jeshurun. Something from Ezekiel, I think. But there's that part in the ceremony where the father blesses the son. My father bent down and whispered in my ear. He said something about loving me and being proud -- much as I want to, I can't remember the exact words -- and then he kissed me on the cheek. I remember the feel of his cheek on mine, the catcher's-glove hand cupping my head, and the smell of Old Spice.

On Saturday mornings, we went to Seymour's luncheonette on Livingston Avenue for a milkshake and maybe a pack of baseball cards. I'd sit on a stool at the counter and twirl. He'd stand next to me, always, as if that was what a man did.

He'd lean against the counter and eat -- too quickly, I think. He was never fat but he was always on the wrong side of the weight curve. He was uneven about physical activity. He'd discover a workout program, do it for three months, go idle for about six, find something new. Rinse, repeat. Like with shampoo.

He hated his job.

He never told me this. He dutifully went to work every day. But I knew. He didn't have a lot of friends either, but that was by choice. He could have been a popular man. People liked him. He could feign charm and warmth, but there was a coldness there. He cared only about his family and he cared with a ferocity that both frightened and exhilarated. You know those stories about someone lifting a car to save a trapped loved one? It took little to imagine him performing such a feat. The world was his family -- the rest of the planet's inhabitants no more than the periphery, deep background, scenery.

The night was his domain. He slept lightly, too lightly. I wonder if that is to blame, the way he'd startle awake. I would try my hardest to tiptoe past his door, but no matter how great my stealth, he would jerk upright in his bed as if I'd dropped a Popsicle on his stomach. Every night the same thing:

"Marc?" he'd shout.

"Yes, Dad."

"Something wrong?"

"Just going to the bathroom," I'd say. "I've been going by myself since I was 14."

During my freshman year at college, after a particularly debauched frat party, I was struck by a strange realization: this was the first time I'd woken up sick without my father present. His hand was not on my forehead. He was not speaking softly or rubbing my back.

I was alone.

I blame myself for what happened.

Three days before my college graduation, I dropped my father off at the airport.

We were late. He ran to catch his flight. That is the image I can't shake all these years later. My father, hopelessly unhip and out of shape, running for that stupid flight so he could be at a meeting that meant nothing to anybody.

Six hours later, he called from the Comfort Suite in Tampa.

"Let me speak to your mother."

I handed her the phone.

I watched her listen. I saw her face turn white.

"What?" I asked.

"He's having chest pains, but he says he's fine."

And I knew.

And she knew. I called the front desk. I told them to send an ambulance. I called my father back. "I told the front desk to send someone up," and then my father said the most frightening thing of all: "O.K."

No argument, no brave front, no I'm fine.

"But I have to find the room key first," he added.

"What?"

"They'll be here soon. I have to go. I have to find the key."

"Forget the key."

"You might need it."

"For what?"

But he hung up. And again I knew. He had never been ill, but I knew. With my father's strength, you somehow still sensed the fragile.

My mother and I rushed to the airport. I called the hotel from a pay phone. They just wheeled him out the lobby, I was told.

Wheeled him out. I pictured the oxygen mask on his face. I imagined him as I had never seen him: afraid.

He liked building things, my father, but he was bad with his hands. He gardened on weekends, but our shrubs never looked right, not like the shrubs that belonged to the Bauers, who lived next door. Their lawn looked as if it'd been trimmed for a P.G.A. event.

Ours had dandelions tall enough to go on the adult rides at Six Flags.

My father fought in the Korean War but never talked about it.

I didn't even know he'd been in the military until I explored his junk drawer when I was 8 and found a bunch of medals in the bottom. They were loose in the drawer, mingling with spare change.

Our plane had a stopover at the Atlanta airport, the epicenter of the stopover. I called the hospital. The nurse assured me that my father was fine.

But I didn't believe her. She transferred me to the doctor. I told the doctor I was calling about my father, that I was his son. The doctor did that calm voice thing and asked me my name. He told me, Marc -- using my name so often it became like an annoying tick -- that my father was in serious condition, Marc, that they are going to operate in a few minutes. I felt my legs go. He's awake and comfortable, the doctor told me. He understands what is happening. I asked to speak to him. "The phone cord won't reach, Marc," the doctor said.

"Tell him we're on our way," I insisted.

"I will." But I didn't believe him.

My father always longed for a Cadillac. He got one when he turned 52.

He listened only to AM radio. Every once in a while a certain song would come on and he'd turn it up. His face would change. The lines would soften. He'd lean back and steer with his wrists and whistle.

By the time we arrived at the hospital, night had fallen. I sat in the waiting room. He was still in surgery. My mother did not speak, something that is usually accompanied by a parting sea or burning bush.

I began to make deals with whatever higher power would listen, you know the kind, about what I'd do, what I'd risk, what I'd trade, if only it could be morning again and we could leave for that damn plane a few minutes earlier and if he hadn't run to catch that flight, if he'd just walked instead, if he didn't devour his food, if he kept up with an exercise program, if I'd been an easier son.

At 4 a.m., that awful hospital beeping sound echoed down the still corridor, then a rush that stole our breath. The air was suddenly gone. And so, too, was my father.

We bury him on Father's Day.

The weather is, of course, spectacular, mocking my gloom. The men his age come up to me and tell me all about their own heart problems, about their close calls, about how lucky they've been. I look through them, wondering why they are the ones who get to stand before me, happily breathing. I wish them ill. I call his former boss, the one who sold the company and made my father stuff envelopes with his resume at the age of 56. I tell him that if he shows up at the funeral, I'll punch him in the face. He, too, is to blame.

I wonder if my father was scared near the end or if he went into surgery thinking it would be all be O.K. Don't know, of course.

There is a lot I don't know. I don't know what my father wanted out of life. I don't know what he wanted to be when he was a young man, before I came around and changed everything. He never expressed any of that to me. And I never asked.

A week after the funeral, I call his doctor down in Tampa.

"He died alone," I say.

"He knew you were there."

"You didn't tell him."

"I did."

"What did he say?"

The doctor takes a second.

"He said for you to check his pocket."

"What?"

"You'd need a place to stay overnight. He said to check his pocket."

Cradling the phone, I go to the closet where his belongings, still in the plastic hospital bag the nurse handed me, are hanging. I break the seal. The Old Spice scent is faint but there. I dig past the Hanes V-Neck and find his pants.

"What else?" I ask.

"Pardon?"

"What else did he say?"

"That's it."

"Those were his final words? Check his pocket?"

His voice is suddenly soft.

"Yes."

My fingers slip into the pocket of his pants and hit something metallic. I pull it out.

The hotel key. He'd found it after all. He put it in his pocket. His last words, his last act, for us.

I still have the key.

I keep it in a drawer with his medals.

Postcards From the Edge - The Urban Nomads

Story location
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/15/nyregion...wanted=all&position=

Postcards From the Edge - The Urban Nomads
By ALISON STATEMAN
June 15, 2003

IT'S one of those bone-numbing rainy days, the kind that gets under your fleece and rain gear, rendering all attempts at warmth futile. Julie, 26, is in a mood as foul as the weekend weather.

"This is ridiculous,'' she said, her words punctuated with four-letter invectives. "You would think that people would be more willing to help out, but it's not like that.

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"Actually," she added, gesturing toward her plastic cup, clearly disappointed with its thin layer of coins, "on nicer days I make more money.''

Strangers are both intrigued and repelled by this slight, black-clad figure, a pilled skullcap low on her forehead, who is slumped against a wall adorned with graffiti. Black dirt is caked under her fingernails and nestled in the crevices of her open palms.

A patch of sidewalk near the corner of 14th Street and University Place is Julie's regular spot to beg for spare change, to "spange,'' as she and her friends put it. This is where Julie spends most of her days, along with Whiskey, her tawny shepherd-pit bull mix, and Samantha, a pretty, 20-year-old brunette. Samantha, who goes by Sam and is from upstate New York, is dressed in baggy combat pants ripped at the crotch, and, like her companion, refuses to give her last name.

Along with "Dumpster diving" - scrounging for garbage outside restaurants - Julie and Sam meet their needs for food and shelter by using signs that advertise their plight. Sometimes Sam carries a sign that reads, "Trying to Get Home to My Mother's House.'' Julie's current sign, which is illustrated with paw prints, reads: "Homeless, Hungry and Broke. We are trying to get off the street tonight. Need @ $30 for a place to sleep. Please help. Thank you!!'' The amount requested is her share of the approximately $65 that she and Sam will need to rent a cheap room for the night.

If they come up short, they will sleep on a side street, under scaffolding or an awning. Julie used to stay in squats on the Lower East Side, but more often than not, it's a cold, concrete bed for her.

For the last decade Julie has been part of a little-known segment of homeless youth often called urban nomads. Year in and year out they travel to a few select North American cities, living on little or no money on the fringes of a society they have grown disillusioned with or, like Julie, actively despise.

Like birds, they migrate according to the weather, spending the winter in the warmer parts of the South and West - San Francisco, New Orleans and Austin are favorites - before returning north as the weather grows milder. Manhattan is a prime destination, even though the life, never easy, is likely to get harder, given impending budget cuts that would affect the city's social services.

According to statistics provided by the Partnership for the Homeless, an advocacy group, an estimated 19,000 homeless and runaway youths live in New York's shelters or on its streets.

"New York is a place where people come for all reasons,'' said City Councilman Alan J. Gerson, who sponsored a conference at Pace University two weeks ago to explore the growing problem of homeless youth in the city. "That's the history of New York. So if a person is homeless on our streets, they are our problem and our imperative."

Basic Black, and Tattoos

Urban nomads like Julie are a population that social scientists have only recently begun to study. Chief among those who focus on this group is Don C. Des Jarlais, research director at the Baron Edmond de Rothschild Chemical Dependency Institute at Beth Israel Medical Center. The center has just issued preliminary findings from its Urban Nomad Study, now in its third year.

For the purposes of the study, urban nomads are defined as youths who have traveled to at least five different cities or towns in the past three years and at least three within the past year. After interviewing several hundred people who fit these criteria, the researchers are getting a feel for who they are, though hard statistics are elusive.

"We haven't really attempted to get a good estimate of the numbers, but I'd say it's probably in the thousands," said Dr. Des Jarlais. He estimates that nationally there may be 5,000 to 10,000 urban nomads, 1,000 of whom pass through New York each year.

Dr. Des Jarlais discovered urban nomads during an earlier study of drug users on the Lower East Side. "I was curious how they managed, how they survive,'' he said. "And the subtext was, 'Could I do that?' ''

"This is a challenging lifestyle,'' he added. "But it's not as if they have totally given up on their lives.''

Dr. Des Jarlais says that while urban nomads sometimes exaggerate or dramatize their pasts, they tend not to make up stories. Their parents are often ambivalent about their children leaving. "Some parents were probably very upset that they left, and some were probably very happy to see them go.'' Seventy to 80 percent of urban nomads said they stayed in touch with their parents, usually their mothers, but, he said, "when we asked, 'Could you go back home?,' only 50 percent said they could.''

While urban nomads and the city's traditional homeless youth often share a history of physical or sexual abuse, the two groups differ in many respects. Typically, New York's population of runaways and homeless youths is heavily minority and includes both girls and boys. By contrast, urban nomads tend to be white and largely male, with backgrounds that are typically working class and occasionally middle-class. Many are children from homes where a parent's remarriage has produced family conflicts. Others are simply bored.

"In general, their home situations are not good, but it is not like they are in dire danger or anything like that,'' Dr. Des Jarlais said. "They are sort of not getting along well at home and they want to do something different, so they leave."

Unlike most of New York's runaways, who often pursue the dual street-survival occupations of drug-dealing and prostitution and hang out in places like Times Square, urban nomads tend to shun prostitution and heavy drug use and are drawn to the East Village and the Lower East Side.

The East Village holds a particular attraction because of its history of social and political unrest, its squatter tradition and its punk roots, typified by landmarks like CBGB's on the Bowery. The usual attire of combat or work clothes or basic black, set off by multiple piercings and tattoos, also mirrors the punk and working-man sympathies of the typical urban nomad.

But looking different can backfire. "From the moment they get into town, they're targeted by police because of the way they look,'' said John Welch, program director of Safe Horizon's Streetwork Project on the Lower East Side, a group that serves several hundred urban nomads each year. "They're more visible.'' As a result, they are often ticketed for minor offenses, like panhandling.

Drug-Free, Burned Out

Passers-by will tell Julie she doesn't need money if she has enough cash to pay for her tattoos and all that silver. In fact, she often wears long-sleeve shirts to hide her extensive network of tattoos, and she readily explains that she got them for free from friends who were budding tattoo artists and practiced on her.

It may, however, be the choice of artwork that makes people pause. A pentagram and a black skull with twisted horns are imprinted on her neck, and her hands and left upper arm are decorated with the phrases "Godless" and "What Life?"

"It's a scare tactic,'' she said. "I'm not in any way a holy person, but I'm also not satanic. It kind of reflects how I feel inside about people and life and the world and stuff. I'm not a happy, colorful, optimistic person, so a lot of my tattoos interpret the way I feel about everything."

Julie's physical condition also startles. Her front teeth, which arch out slightly, are yellowed, and she is rail-thin even for her petite frame. Julie hasn't been to a doctor or dentist in more than 10 years. However, she can recite the dates on which Whiskey was vaccinated and spayed and carries the paperwork to prove it in her army-green pack.

In fact, Whiskey seems to be the only being she doesn't seem to dislike, herself included. At one point, she grasped Whiskey's face and wept. "I love this dog, man," she said as Whiskey licked her tears before she could wipe them away.

Dogs play a big part in the urban nomad culture, providing their street-bound owners with companionship and protection. "A lot of people say, 'Oh, why don't you stay in a shelter?' '' Julie said, mimicking their concerned tone. "Well, obviously it's because I have a dog. 'Well, why don't you give the dog away?' I love my dog. I'm not going to give my dog away so I can stay in a shelter. I'd rather sleep in the street.''

Almost everyone who passes her stares. Some people grimace in disgust; a few cross the street. When a woman starts to take a picture of Julie, the action pushes her over the edge. "Can you not do that, please?" Julie asks.

"People think of us as some kind of New York landmark,'' she said later, her pale blue eyes glowering. "It's amusing to them. I am amusing to them. 'Oh, look at that, honey,' '' she said in the mocking tone she adopts when impersonating strangers. 'That little creep with the dog begging for money.' ''

Indeed, many passers-by are drawn less by her than by her pet, who this day rests a weary head upon Julie's thigh and shivers despite the red sweater wrapped tightly around her. Several people who drop change in Julie's cup announce, "This is for the dog."

This angers Julie. "They think I'm going to use it for drugs," she explained. She admits that she used heroin for four years, but said she has been drug-free since 2001.

Although Julie says she has been coming to the city every year since she was 17, making cross-country excursions to San Francisco and Portland when she can prevail on Sam to watch Whiskey, she is hard pressed to explain exactly why she is here.

"First of all, I'm kind of preoccupied with my financial situation,'' she said, "and No. 2, five or six years ago I might be able to speak really clearly about how I feel about things, but now I'm just so exhausted with having to explain myself all the time. Maybe it's just because I've had so much time to think, because I'm just sitting around thinking, that it's just like my brain is just burned out.

"I've become this kind of totally miserable, hateful person because I have to look at all these people every single day,'' she added. "But I put myself here, so I can't really blame anybody else. I guess I could have done things a little differently when I was younger, but I don't know."

Julie says she ran away from her home in New Hampshire at the age of 15. Asked why she left, she responds with an obscenity about her parents. According to her account of her early years, she spent time in a children's home and a year at Keene State College in New Hampshire before flunking out and hitting the road with like-minded friends.

She says she misses her father, who just turned 60 and used to work in computers. But the few times she has reached out to her parents, she said, by phone or through visits, she has been rejected. According to Julie, they are still angry at her for running away.

After so many years on the street, Julie doesn't seem to know what to make of generosity or choice. When a sailor in town for Fleet Week approached and peeled off a $5 bill, she asked awkwardly if he were really a sailor. Later on, when asked what she'd like for dinner, she had to think for several minutes, not wanting to blow a rare opportunity to choose her food. She opted for Taco Bell.

Despite evidence to the contrary, Julie doesn't think of herself as homeless.

"Homeless people to me are people who push around shopping carts and push strollers and they just sit around,'' she said. "Lazy and crazy is what I say."

The next day she's not so sure. "Once you do this for awhile,'' she said, "it gets kind of exhausting and it's hard not to give in to those things that will make your life a little bit easier, such as getting a job and settling down and having security blankets and a nice place to live."

Could she ever lead that kind of life? "I hope so,'' she replied morosely, "because I don't want to be pushing a shopping cart around when I'm 50. If I make it to 50."

Dr. Des Jarlais has found that urban nomads seldom reach that age. "We've found almost nobody over 30,'' he said. "Some of them tend to move into conventional society and some of them, of course, develop health problems and die.'' Few find their way into organized programs, in part because programs that meet their needs are scarce.

The "Grapes of Wrath' Route

Urban nomad culture is built upon a patchwork of traditions that reflect its anti-establishment bent. Hopping freight trains, a practice that harkens back to the hobo of the Depression, is a favored mode of transportation. Many urban nomads find work sporadically as house painters or migrant laborers in the tradition chronicled in John Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath."

Shane, 26, a soft-spoken friend of Julie's who travels to Maine each August to harvest the state's famed blueberries, matches the template perfectly.

Unlike Julie, who is all explosive energy, Shane is mellowness personified. Though coated in grime from the top of his once-beige Dewar's baseball cap to the tips of his work boots, though his backpacks emit the musky odor of too many nights spent sleeping in the rain and soot, he manages to maintain an air of dignity.

Even his choice of tattoos belies a gentler nature, from the character from his favorite comic book, The Realm of Chaos, etched on his forearm to the heart and scroll adorned with the names of his two former dogs, Sasha and Blue, on his bicep. Perhaps because of the shave he just finagled in a restroom at Kmart on Astor Place, his angular face, punctuated by a strawberry-blond goatee, looks surprisingly youthful.

Shane, who is stationed across the street from Julie, is biding his time in the city before moving on to his next odd job.

"I follow the harvest,'' he said. "I do blueberries in Maine, then I do beets. I go down to Virginia and do apples. I go up to Alaska and work in the canneries. I don't like to stay in one place for too long. I love traveling. I don't like the whole 9-to-5 thing. I like to go to work for a couple of weeks, a couple of months at a time, and save up for whatever gear I need and go on to the next place."

Shane said he has a regular winter gig painting houses in Townsend, Wash., a job that provides a steady income and a trailer for shelter. Like the majority of older urban nomads, he eventually tired of the city circuit and began opting for odd jobs that took him to smaller towns; by contrast, younger nomads are usually drawn to the glitz that bigger urban environments offer.

Shane says he likes his life. But even if he wanted to get a conventional job, doing so without a permanent address would be nearly impossible.

"Some people tell you to get a job,'' he said. "They don't understand that I'd love to have a job, but it's kind of hard when you're homeless to walk into a place when you don't have an address or anything. To get a place to live, you have to have a job, but then again to get a job, you have to have a place to live where you can wake up every day to go to work. That's why I do the harvests. You can camp right there and go to work."

Shane, who said he was born and raised in Washington State, was not always the self-described laid-back person he presents himself as today. A decade ago, he was a rebellious, hard-partying teenager, with a tough Navy man as a stepfather. At one point, his mother gave him an ultimatum: Follow the house rules or get out.

"I was doing a lot of drinking, so I wasn't listening to my mother, so I ended up getting kicked out when I was 16, so I've been on my own since then,'' he said. "She told me if I couldn't follow her rules and my stepfather's rules, then I wasn't welcome to live there. And being the know-it-all that I was as a teenager, I just left.''

He first came to New York at 17, drawn by a sense that this was his true place. His real father, who had left his mother around the time Shane was born, was originally from the city, and though Shane has never met his father, the city has not disappointed.

"When I was young, I used to picture New York a lot and see movies about it,'' he said from his curbside vantage point, surrounded by skeletons of umbrellas, abandoned cigarettes and clouds of bus exhaust. "I guess I just always wanted to see it."

"It was just like I thought it would be,'' he added. "It's just beautiful. The old brownstones and old buildings. It's such an old city and has such history. I like it here."

Shane recently earned his high school equivalency diploma and spends time in the main reading room of the New York Public Library, writing in his journal and reading books like "Last Exit to Brooklyn.''

His mother, a former teacher, is retired and lives with his stepfather in Spain. He calls and writes her regularly, and he gets her mail sent care of Streetwork's Lower East Side center. "Me and mom are really close,'' he said. "I talk to her a lot."

Reaching into a torn Duane Reade bag, he pulled out photographs of his mother's Chihuahua, dressed in a sweater, and a postcard she had sent him from Portugal. Does his mother worry about him? "I think she used to because I used to be into a lot of drugs,'' he said. "But she knows I've grown out of that.''

Child becomes father to the old man

May 01, 2003
The Child becomes father to the old man - and so must I.

From "The Horse Notebook,"

Horses have not hurt anyone yet, except when they bet on them.
     Stuart Cloete

An instinct sympathy which makes horse and master one heart, one pulse, one understanding love - is made never born.
     G. A. Chamberlain

First Viennese Vegetable Orchestra -
For Cooking Up Music, Mixed Vegetables Do Fine

Article location
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/06/internat...=print&position=top

Reminds me of Stomp.

For Cooking Up Music, Mixed Vegetables Do Fine
By SARAH LYALL
March 01, 2003

HAMBURG, Germany, March 1 ? Performing music with fresh vegetables brings certain occupational challenges, like the tendency of the instruments to fall apart suddenly.

"We have to be flexible," said Matthias Meinharter, a member of the First Viennese Vegetable Orchestra, who awkwardly lost the mouthpiece for his hollowed-out carrot during a recent concert here, and had to improvise by nibbling at the carrot even as he blew into it.

Carrots, which make fine whistly wind instruments as well as having impressive percussional uses, are the least of it. The orchestra, made up of nine black-clad avant-garde artists from Vienna, uses everything from tiny kidney beans to hefty pumpkins in its work ? beating, shaking, blowing, peeling, spitting, snapping, grating, poking, rubbing and mushing them in startlingly ingenious ways.

The sensitive microphones onstage pick up even the softest hint of vegetable noise, and somehow the result suggests that the musicians are more than just people publicly playing with their food.

"They're very enthusiastic, talented and artistically minded," said Franz Hautzinger, a trumpet player and abstract composer in Vienna, whose compositions for the vegetable orchestra include "Five Improvisations for Mixed Vegetables." Speaking of one of his favorite vegetable instruments, he added, "You can really write for the cucumber-o-phone ? it's an instrument with many, many possibilities."

In Hamburg, the orchestra played in a bohemian-minded arts center and then served post-performance bowls of vegetable soup. The audience seemed to take the whole thing in stride, even when Mr. Meinharter grated carrots so zealously in one piece that the shavings sprayed across the front row (the orchestra also uses kitchen utensils, including knives and blenders).

"I expected it to be just fun and games, but it's really interesting experimental music," said Hartwig Spitzer, a 64-year-old physicist who nonetheless said he would be loath to try it at home. "I play with my compost," he said. "That's enough vegetable life for me."

As he spoke, members of the orchestra were dismantling their instruments ? which generally take about 90 minutes to construct ? and offering those still in good condition, as well as unused backups, for people to take home for dinner.

"We are showing that you can make music not only with common instruments, and also that it's important to work in a multisensual way ? this is not just for your ears but for your nose and your taste as well," said Barbara Kaiser, 30. "Do you need some leeks?"

The orchestra's pieces include traditional Austrian tunes; versions of work by bands like Kraftwerk; and original compositions that evoke house music, techno-pop, electronic music, and genres that defy characterization. "It's become more about the music than the vegetables," Mr. Meinharter said.

His colleague Nikolaus Gansterer said: "It's about the whole procedure of buying and playing and destroying and eating and vanquishing your fears. Nothing lasts forever."

The orchestra was formed about five years ago, and has since played around Europe at the rate of about a concert a month. None of the musicians can quite remember how the idea evolved; Ms. Kaiser, an animator, recalls cooking dinner one evening when she suddenly "thought about the fantasy of people sitting in a concert hall, playing on tomatoes."

In fact, the finale of the Hamburg show was meant to be a piece performed entirely on tomatoes, but the theater asked that it be left out. "It was too dangerous for their beautiful new curtains," Ms. Kaiser said.

It goes without saying that the quality of the music depends on the quality of the vegetables, which must be "really, really fresh," said Mr. Meinharter, who in his other life is an industrial designer and conceptual artist. To find the proper leeks ? fat, fresh and firm ? for the leek-o-lin, a string instrument whose squeaky whistling noise comes from rubbing two wet leeks together, he must lick his potential purchases until satisfied of their musical potential.

Merchants at Vienna's big open-air vegetable market, the Naschmarkt, initially looked askance at the musicians testing out their potential instruments in odd ways, "but now we have some people who know us," Mr. Gansterer said. "They might say, `Wow, I have a very big pumpkin for you.' "

Needed: a magazine about death. - The Grim Reader

This is an idea that PJ and I worked on in 1998, and was triggered by some comments of Joe Calantoni, our housemate. The aim was to create a website called "Gotta Go" to explore all death related issues in a consumption-friendly way. We couldn't bring the project to fructify, but someday I might return to that project. It is the one project closest to my heart.

Unabridged an unedited version at
http://www.opinionjournal.com/la/?id=110003642

Needed: a magazine about death. - The Grim Reader
BY RUSS SMITH
June 18, 2003

There is a magazine waiting to be born if only publishers like Condé Nast, AOL Time Warner and Hearst would stop obsessing about shopping, belly-baring celebrities and stock-market tips. Its name is Obituary.

It's long been a truism that the most popular features of a daily newspaper are the sports pages, comics and death notices. In many cases, people over 40 turn to the day's obituaries first, not only for morbid fascination, but because they recognize the names of famous men and women or, on a local level, neighbors and friends.

Obviously, there wouldn't be a shortage of material for such an enterprise. In the last two weeks, for example, Gregory Peck, Hume Cronyn, David Brinkley and Donald Regan, representing the disparate fields of entertainment, television and politics, all passed away. Only Peck would merit the cover of Obituary--celebrities are the draws for mass-circulation magazines--but a smart editor might've commissioned well-known journalists or historians to examine the lives of the others.

An immediate concern of publishers would be that such a magazine would skew too old, missing the 18-44 demographic that advertisers desire. But as People has demonstrated with its combination of Hollywood, human-interest stories, personal essays and coverage of baking contests and spelling bees, Obituary could appeal to anyone who can read.

In 2003 alone, Obituary's editors would have had so many stories that space alone would dictate the contents of a given week's issue. The scope is fairly amazing: Laci Peterson, military casualties in Iraq, murdered rap stars, bus crashes, teenage drunken-driving accidents, suicides, World War II vets and the inevitable old-age deaths of cultural icons.

But the genius of this magazine would be a combination of sensationalism; thoughtful pieces on diseases like breast cancer, SARS and Alzheimer's; 25th or 50th anniversaries of the deaths of famous people; and longer outtakes on famine in Third World countries.

Another tactic would be to elevate the quality of written obituaries. It's no secret that England's dailies far surpass their American counterparts in this category, giving the author an opportunity to use a death for smart, warts-and-all prose.

For example, compare the following lead paragraphs in the Guardian and the New York Times about the deaths of Peck and Regan:

About Peck, the British newspaper began: "Gregory Peck, who has died aged 87, was an actor whose film career emphasized the importance of being earnest. Serious, restrained and intelligent, though never very exciting, he was one of Hollywood's most enduring stars.

Said the Times: "Gregory Peck, whose chiseled, slightly melancholy good looks, resonant baritone and quiet strength made him an unforgettable presence in films like 'To Kill a Mockingbird,' 'Gentleman's Agreement' and 'Twelve O'Clock High,' died early yesterday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 87."

The contrast in the Regan obituaries is even more striking.

The Guardian: "Donald Regan, who has died of cancer aged 84, was a jovial but combative and driven man who rose from working-class, Irish, south Boston to be the boss of the world's biggest firm of stockbrokers, Merrill Lynch (known to Wall Street as the Thundering Herd). He served as President Reagan's treasury secretary and then, in a bizarre move, swapped jobs with James Baker and took over as chief of staff at the White House."

The Times: "Donald T. Regan, the steel-willed financier who was Treasury secretary and, later, an uncommonly powerful chief of staff to President Reagan until his bitter departure in 1987, died yesterday in Virginia. He was 84 and lived in Williamsburg, Va. The cause was cancer, said a statement from Merrill Lynch, which he once ran."

Should a company launch Obituary, there would be little "buzz" in publishing circles. However, as Maer Roshan, editor of the new, much-hyped and mediocre Radar, has learned, "buzz" is dead.

So to speak.

Claim that water has memory - Remembers substances dissolved in it earlier

Unabridged and unedited article at
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993817

Claim that water has memory - Remembers substances dissolved in it earlier
New Scientist
June 11, 2003
 
Claims do not come much more controversial than the idea that water might retain a memory of substances once dissolved in it. The notion is central to homeopathy, which treats patients with samples so dilute they are unlikely to contain a single molecule of the active compound, but it is generally ridiculed by scientists.

Yet a paper is about to be published in the reputable journal Physica A claiming to show that even though they should be identical, the structure of hydrogen bonds in pure water is very different from that in homeopathic dilutions of salt solutions. Could it be time to take the "memory" of water seriously?

1. Aware of homeopaths' claims that patterns of hydrogen bonds can survive successive dilutions, Rey decided to test samples that had been diluted down to a notional 10-30 grams per cubic centimetre - way beyond the point when any ions of the original substance could remain. "We thought it would be of interest to challenge the theory," he says.
2. Each dilution was made according to a strict protocol, and vigorously stirred at each stage, as homeopaths do. When Rey compared the ultra-dilute lithium and sodium chloride solutions with pure water that had been through the same process, the difference in their thermoluminescence peaks compared with pure water was still there (see graph).
3. "Much to our surprise, the thermoluminescence glows of the three systems were substantially different," he says. He believes the result proves that the networks of hydrogen bonds in the samples were different.
   

Landscape Artists - Out in the Garden, a Reputation Blooms

I am sure my friends from NCSU's School of Design would love this one on Landscape Artists ..

Story location
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/11/realesta...nted=print&position=

Landscape Artists - Out in the Garden, a Reputation Blooms
By DAVID COLMAN
July 11, 2003

I KNEW when he cited Dr. Seuss as one of his inspirations that he was the man," Melissa Meyer said. Perhaps not many people planning a glamorous second home on two acres near the ocean in Sagaponack, N.Y. ? smack in the middle of the socially anxious Hamptons ? would be overjoyed to hear the creator of "Green Eggs and Ham" mentioned as a muse by their prospective landscaper.

Frederick Law Olmsted, one could see. Gertrude Jekyll, Russell Page ? sure. Isamu Noguchi, maybe. But Ken Smith won Ms. Meyer's heart not just with his affinity for Dr. Seuss but with charisma, vision and a résumé of projects that ranged from urban plaza designs to lavish private gardens.

"Ken's a character, and I met him with the hopes that he would give me something I had never seen before ? which he did," Ms. Meyer said recently. "He fulfilled my expectations. I could just tell ? he's the creative genius kind of guy."

You do not often hear words like "genius," "guru" and "artist" mentioned in the same sentence as "landscape architect." As a profession, landscape architects and designers have had to deal with a career profile that casts them as the earthy and earnest kid brother of the mighty architect.

But lately, star landscape architects like Mr. Smith have been scaling the walls of high-end design as stealthily as Boston ivy, as people across the country have become more and more appreciative of the way that gardens add to the pleasure, and perhaps value, of their second homes.

Now, landscape designers ? once the creepers of the design world ? are becoming name-brand entities and are joining the ranks of, and in some cases eclipsing, their bricks-and-mortar peers. As décoritects ? high-end residential architects ? downsize to meet the needs of a less constructive economy, business for landscape architects (whose rule-of-thumb budget is 10 to 15 percent of the house's cost) is thriving. The May issue of Money magazine reported that Americans spent $14.3 billion last year on landscape design, triple the 1998 figure.

The profession's latest cream of the crop ? among them Mr. Smith, Edwina von Gal, Topher Delaney, Pamela Burton, Deborah Nevins, Perry Guillot and Madison Cox ? are newly fashionable characters themselves.

They have clear visions, interesting attitudes, designer wardrobes and that frisson of lifestyle-gurudom from which fashion, interior and industrial designers have already profited ? plus a helping of that spiritual je ne sais quoi you only get from working hand in hand with Mother Nature.

"They are gaining a certain celebrity," said Dominique Browning, the editor of House & Garden. "I am even noticing it in garden tours, which used to be a retirement-age activity. Now it's a much younger crowd. There's definitely a more name-droppy aspect to it."

Several factors are lending their profiles a Miracle-Gro boost of chic. Among them: a post-boom penchant for retreat and refuge and a new wealth of information about plants and gardening on the Internet. And now that the McMansion is fast becoming the white stretch limo of the architecture world, some high-end customers don't want houses that practice Manifest Destiny on their lot lines. "Here in our modest vacation home," the new thinking goes, "we're just plain folks."

But that humility stops at the front door. "The house itself can be humble ? that rustic-hut idea," said Mr. Smith, who prides himself on his dexterity at grafting historical landscape concepts with fanciful, modern (and even artificial) materials. "When people are doing the second home, they're vacating their ordinary lives, and the landscape is part of that escape ? the idea of getting back to nature. So they want a landscape that's not what they ordinarily live with."

That was certainly the case with the Meyer house. Mr. Smith took the two basic elements of the Hamptons landscape ? open fields and hedges ? and turned them "slightly askew," as Ms. Meyer put it. One of the hedges is a line of hydrangeas, another is holly. A stripe in the lawn is given extra fertilizer, so the grass there is always greener. For a civilized touch of the wilderness, there's a field of wildflowers one could get lost in ? or at least imagine doing so.

MS. MEYER was delighted. "I spend all my time outside," she said. "Sitting by the pool, looking at the perennials. I've surprised myself by how much I get into it. Now I find myself padding around, pulling out weeds, seeing what flowers are coming up."

But even an un-grand garden can take a truckload of green to get it to look that way. Madison Cox, whose Moroccan garden at the Shore Club in Miami has become one of the hot drinks spots in town and created a ripple effect for his residential business, agreed. "Some of the budgets on these second homes can equal what is spent on a primary residence," he said.

No single look epitomizes the trend. While Mr. Smith is known for sculptural, avant-garde plantings that might, for example, meld hardscape (i.e., stones, gravel and decking) and otherwise humdrum ingredients like grasses. Perry Guillot's style is a sort of 1930's Hollywood meets 1900's Hamptons, an understated yet luxurious sense of high-hedged garden glamour.

Edwina von Gal has carved a high-profile niche as a creator of gardens that match a classic sense of formality with a Zen-like minimalism, set off by offhand, quirky touches, like a swing centered in a "room" made of hedges.

There is more going on here than aesthetics, of course. According to the American Society of Landscape Architects, the proper landscaping can add 20 percent or more to a home's resale value.

But even though it's possible for the layman to appreciate how gardening can enhance the look of a house, the technical aspects of working with deciduous décor can be intimidating. "It's much more overwhelming ? a decorator is dealing with set rooms," said Ms. Browning, the House & Garden editor. "It's much harder to look at a field and imagine three rooms."

Barbara Gladstone, the Manhattan art dealer, hired Deborah Nevins to do the small garden at her house in Sag Harbor, N.Y., and did not bother hiring a decorator for the interior. "I'm smart enough to know what I don't know," Ms. Gladstone said. "I always thought if I bought a house, she would be the first call I made."

Ms. Nevins is a master of historically correct plantings, and the garden she created for Ms. Gladstone's 1860 brick house reflects what, ideally, might have been there originally.

"With interiors, you can more or less impose what you want," Ms. Gladstone said. "Nature is profound ? these people, they have to work hand in hand with what is. It's like the difference between sailing and motoring. In a sailboat you have to respect the wind, whereas with a motorboat, you just go right through."

Pamela Burton is a Los Angeles landscape architect whose clients range from Hollywood heavyweights like Diane Keaton and Michael Crichton to Southern California institutions. Ms. Burton, who published "Private Landscapes: Modernist Gardens of Southern California" last year, said that the growing respect for landscaping stemmed from people's desire to siphon the utmost pleasure from the outdoor space they have. Ms. Burton's strength is creating lush but not lavish spaces, never too minimal nor too grand, with lots of little gardens or "rooms" with different themes and uses ? a moon-viewing garden, for one. (Talk about inconspicuous consumption.)

"I think the idea of solace is something missing in our everyday world," she said. "As the planet fills up with more people, having some corner of the world to go to, even a little plot of grass, can be a tremendous relief."

John Baldessari, the conceptual artist, hired Ms. Burton to redo the garden of a bungalow he had bought in Santa Monica, Calif., and has since been quite pleased with the result. "I sit outside at night and feel totally tranquil," he said. "All my cares of the day just wilt away. I was wondering if the plants actually absorb sounds ? it's so quiet. It's a marvelous experience."

When Sam Shahid, the creative director and president of Shahid & Company, an advertising and design firm in Manhattan, bought an 1876 farmhouse in Bridgehampton, N.Y., he didn't think his acre of wooded land needed much. Then he met Perry Guillot. After he struggled to articulate what he wanted, Mr. Guillot told him: "I know what you want. You want a London park."

Mr. Shahid hired him on the spot. "I never thought landscaping was important, that it could make you so happy," Mr. Shahid said. "I always thought it was the house, the way it was painted, the way it was decorated. You hear `landscape,' you think rosebushes, a little garden, you know, like nothing."

But Mr. Guillot transformed the property, cutting down all but a few choice trees, letting the sun flood over the place and planting a large oval hedge in back. In the center he put a simple, elegant rectangle of a pool. Mr. Shahid was overwhelmed. "You don't know why you feel the way you do," he said. "It's a real pleasure thing."

So many people have the same ameliorative reaction to landscaping that scientists are now studying it. John Stilgoe, professor of environmental studies at Harvard, said that the concepts outlined in "The Biophilia Hypothesis," Edward O. Wilson and Stephen R. Kellert's 1993 book, which posits that people are innately drawn to natural surroundings for mental and physical well-being, were driving the landscaping boom and would continue to do so.

"There is emerging medical evidence that the aesthetic end of landscaping turns out to be founded on medical reasons, that you will feel better emotionally in a garden," Professor Stilgoe said.

Mr. Shahid would agree. His admiration for his landscaper seems to know no bounds. "I do have this trust with him that I don't have with architects," he said. "It's almost like a doctor. You sort of fall in love."

Cuban Musician Compay Segundo Dead at 95 - Buena Vista Social Club

I can still remember the day Jason, Bobby, and I went to see the Buena Vista Social Club. What a blast it was, and also on the way we stopped by that water-crossing of various levels.

Unedited and unabridged version at
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...n_nm/cuba_compay_dc

Cuban Musician Compay Segundo Dead at 95
July 14, 2003

 Compay Segundo, one of Cuba's most renowned "troubadours" and the charming frontman for the Buena Vista Social Club group, has died at the age of 95. Compay won international fame with the 1997 Grammy Award-winning recording Buena Vista Social Club produced by American guitarist Ry Cooder. The group's fame was spread by the film Buena Vista Social Club by German director Wim Wenders. The record brought back into the limelight a group of talented musicians who had all but been forgotten in Cuba, including Compay, pianist Ruben Gonzalez, and singers Ibrahim Ferrer and Omara Portuondo. "The flowers of life come to everyone. One has to be ready not to miss them. Mine arrived after I was 90," the cigar-smoking musician said in a recent interview.

Compay, who was born in 1907 in Siboney, outside Santiago, enjoyed a second youth traveling around the world and recording two albums of his own. Wearing his trademark Panama hat, Compay gave concerts until May this year, when his health deteriorated. Compay, whose real name was Francisco Repilado, died of kidney failure at his home in Miramar, Havana, shortly before midnight on Sunday, his son Salvador said. The guitarist and singer, who made traditional Cuban music known worldwide, will be buried in his native Santiago in eastern Cuba later on Monday.

Solar-Powered Car Race Opens in Chicago

Reminds me of the good old days when Jason tried to build a solar car for himself ...

Unabridged and unedited article at
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...&u=/ap/solar_racers

Solar-Powered Car Race Opens in Chicago
By DON BABWIN
July 14, 2003

The American Solar Challenge started when a team from Kansas State University became the first from 20 U.S. and Canadian colleges to hit the road in a 2,300-mile race that will end in about 10 days in Claremont, Calif. The vehicles are powered by the 3,000 or so small solar cells that cover them. They can easily travel over 50 mph and can climb past 70 mph under the right conditions, students said.

Drivers will spend most of their time on the way to California on historic Route 66. The race sponsored in part by the U.S. Department of Energy features cars that were years and, in some cases, well over $100,000 in the making. Made of the lightest and strongest materials the students can find, including the Kevlar used to make bulletproof vests, the cars can weigh as little as 400 pounds, students said.

Much of Europe Blisters Under Heat Wave - Need Need Water

Hey Watergirl, thought this might be of interest to you.

Unabridged and unedited article at
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...europe_weather_woes

Much of Europe Blisters Under Heat Wave - Need Need Water
By JAMEY KEATEN,
July 15, 2003

Levels in some of Europe's leading rivers were dropping. German officials said the Rhine was at five-year lows, and ships along the Danube faced the risk of running aground in Romania. Authorities in Romania were digging deeper channels in the Danube to prevent ships from getting stuck, and ordered shipping companies to reduce their loads on one of eastern Europe's top commercial arteries.

Scorching temperatures in Italy prompted authorities Tuesday to discuss whether to declare a state of emergency in the country's north because of a weeks-long drought. Rome officials spoke about rationing water in dozens of the capital's districts, and Italian newspapers warned that fruit and vegetable prices could rise by 30 percent because output from parched fields was shrinking. Italy suffered power blackouts late last month when citizens overloaded the system during a heat wave. Big power plants on the River Po ? at its lowest level in decades ? lack the water needed to cool their turbines. Meteorologists in Italy predicted the searing temperatures and lack of rain in the country's battered north would continue into August. Some experts blamed global warming .

Bob Dylan Plays Bob Dylan, Whoever That Is - Review of Masked and Anonymous

I remember that Sean and I used to talk about Bob Dylan, and one thing that we surprisingly agreed upon was that Dylan probaby had one more good effort coming out, which we thought turned out to be Time Out of Mind. Yes, it was that long long ago. But, obviously, Dylan has much more than what we thought he did.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/27/movies/2...nted=print&position=

Bob Dylan Plays Bob Dylan, Whoever That Is
By JON PARELES
July 27 2003

JACK FATE isn't exactly Bob Dylan, although he's the central character in Mr. Dylan's new movie, "Masked and Anonymous." Then again, he's not exactly not Mr. Dylan, either.

He has Mr. Dylan's poker face, his song catalog, his wardrobe of cowboy suits, his reputation for making songs unrecognizable and his illustrious past. "Nobody could be like you, and a great many have tried," a sleazy promoter named Uncle Sweetheart tells him. Jack Fate has Mr. Dylan's band, which appears on screen as a cover band named, well, Simple Twist of Fate. And he has Mr. Dylan's gift for dry, knowing one-liners: when Uncle Sweetheart tells him, "You're all skin and bones," he calmly replies, "Aren't we all?"

Then again, everybody's a philosopher in "Masked and Anonymous," which opened on Thursday. Thug, promoter, journalist, girlfriend, revolutionary, television executive, dictator, prison guard ? they all speak in parables and aphorisms and wisecracks that might just be wisdom, borrowing the diction of the King James Bible and of the blues. Their conversations ponder freedom, love, politics, time, conscience and death. And the tone ? prophecy switching to zinger and back ? is familiar to anyone who's ever heard a Dylan song. The screenplay is credited to Sergei Petrov and Rene Fontaine, pseudonyms for Mr. Dylan and the movie's director, Larry Charles.

Identity has long been a shell game for Mr. Dylan. "You may call me Terry, you may call me Timmy, you may call me Bobby, you may call me Zimmy," he sang in "Gotta Serve Somebody." But always, he has confounded and intrigued the many listeners who have tried to figure him out.

His voice and his songwriting are immediately identifiable, yet he's utterly mercurial, racking up as many inconsistencies as there are gigs on his perpetual touring schedule. Ever since he realized, very early on, that being the voice of a generation was a thankless, impossible role, he has strewn his songs and public appearances with hints and contradictions. He dodges even the slightest chance of being pinned down: He has been a believer and a skeptic, a traditionalist and a rebel, a heartbreaker and a man left lonely, an activist and a cynic.

"Masked and Anonymous" ? title duly noted ? steps back enough to let viewers see how much Mr. Dylan enjoys his elusiveness. He has registered what people have said about him through the years, and he doesn't necessarily mind a little hyperbolic praise, including being compared to Jesus walking on water. Characters in the movie discuss his songs in the manner of rock critics or discussion-board fans.

He's also well aware of how far his songs have traveled. The first one heard as the movie begins is "My Back Pages," sung in Japanese by the Magokoro Brothers. Searing performances of songs like "Drifter's Escape" (which is mysteriously absent from the soundtrack album) and "Cold Irons Bound" by Mr. Dylan and his band share the soundtrack with various unlikely versions of Dylan songs, including a turntable-scratching Italian remake of "Like a Rolling Stone." They provide yet another batch of alternative Dylans to toy with.

Mr. Dylan has had a sporadic film presence since the 1960's, appearing in jumpy documentaries like "Don't Look Back" and "Eat the Document" and making an incongruous appearance as a retired rocker and mentor in the 1987 "Hearts of Fire." In Sam Peckinpah's "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid," he wrote the soundtrack music (including "Knockin' on Heaven's Door") and played a knife-wielding character with an apt Dylan name: Alias. But Mr. Dylan took charge of a film only with the rambling 1978 "Renaldo and Clara," which he wrote (with Sam Shepard) and directed during the ever-mutating mid-1970's Rolling Thunder Revue tour.

He called himself Renaldo while Ronnie Hawkins (who brought together the Band) was billed as "Bob Dylan." Other people are also mistaken in the movie for Mr. Dylan, including the musician Bob Neuwirth, who explains, "I'm not Bob Dylan, I'm the Masked Tortilla."

In a way, "Masked and Anonymous" is a latter-day sequel to "Renaldo and Clara," with a star who's had an additional quarter-century of hard-traveling mileage. Like "Renaldo and Clara," the new movie has rockers, preachers, prisoners and backstage machinations, and it teases at questions about the songwriter as public figure, hired hand and lover. But there's a major difference: "Masked and Anonymous" plays like a feature film, complete with an intelligible plot, vivid professional camerawork and well-known actors, rather than like a stoned, hand-held home movie.

It also plays like a Dylan song: a shaggy-dog story about power, love, show business, prodigal sons, faith and destiny. And it flips easily between the attitudes of Mr. Dylan's two most recent albums: the death-haunted estrangement of "Time Out of Mind" and the gallows-humor cackles and shrugs of " `Love and Theft.' " Jack Fate seems familiar because he has inhabited Dylan songs for many years.

"Masked and Anonymous" takes place "somewhere in America," where Spanish and English words blare from radios. (It was shot on digital video in some vividly seedy locations in Los Angeles.) A bloody revolution and counter-revolution are raging; the dictatorial president, whose portrait seems to be on every flat surface, is dying. Jack Fate, the faded rock legend, is released from prison to play at a dubious humanitarian benefit organized by Uncle Sweetheart (John Goodman). A trusted roadie (Luke Wilson) returns with an old bluesman's guitar, and a bitter, 1960's-obsessed journalist (Jeff Bridges) shows up to write a story. Whose son Jack Fate is, and why he was jailed, are among the twists.

The narrative sounds bleak in summary; there's no happy ending, and there are some grim, sudden bursts of violence. "Every period in history has been more or less tragic," the journalist observes. Mr. Dylan's prognosis for America is a ruthless clampdown on everything from behavior to collective memory. But just as often, the movie is droll, filled with pithy, hardboiled comebacks. "You ever coming back?" a friend asks as Fate ambles away. "I did come back," he says.

Mr. Dylan and Mr. Charles (best known as a writer and producer of "Seinfeld" and as a director for "Curb Your Enthusiasm") have packed "Masked and Anonymous" with enough enigmatic visual cues and in-jokes to make Dylan fans long for the freeze-frames of a DVD. The fictional TV network's schedule board lists Dylan-titled shows like "Jokerman," "Empire Burlesque" and "Hurricane." An office building directory includes a character out of William Burroughs, Dr. Benway. More mysteriously, the journalist's girlfriend (Penélope Cruz) prays while wearing a Metallica T-shirt, and her hand is tattooed "333." And are those stigmata on one character's hand?

The movie ends with Fate, and America, worse off than they were when it started. But his craggy face looks somehow satisfied, as if he never expected anything else. "Sometimes it's not enough to know the meaning of things, sometimes we have to know what things don't mean as well," he says in voice-over. Fans will prise meanings from "Masked and Anonymous"; its author has put them there. And as they do, he makes one more drifter's escape.

N.C. Garden Contains Hidden Treasures - John Gurkin loves Ann "Red"

Oh Sweet North Carolina.

Unabridged and unedited version at
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-PRI-Reds-Garden.html

N.C. Garden Contains Hidden Treasures - John Gurkin loves Ann "Red"
August 06, 2003

WILLIAMSTON, N.C. (AP) -- For six years, John Gurkin did little besides take care of his ailing wife and maintain the eight-acre garden they built together.

When Ann ``Red'' Gurkin became too weak to walk, her husband carried her in his arms through the garden, with its two wooden foot bridges, statues and a pond. When the eastern North Carolina summers became too muggy, he put her in their Lincoln Town Car and drove her through the grass.

Red was 66 when she died May 4, 1996, of emphysema and heart problems that kept her on oxygen for the last two years of her life. She almost took John with her to the grave.

``I was suicidal,'' John Gurkin recalled, wiping tears from his eyes as he stood in their garden. ``I didn't even want to live. I still have a hard time.''

He comforted himself by tending to the garden, adding signs throughout expressing his love. A marble sign beneath her photograph at the entrance to the garden reads: ``This garden is dedicated in loving memory to Ann 'Red' Gurkin. The beauty she created here will live on for all who pass by.''

The garden, not advertised and on private property, attracts travelers who take Big Mill Road as a short cut to the Outer Banks that bypasses the stop-and-go traffic of Williamston proper. Gurkin welcomes visitors, though he has banned weddings and other events because the insurance he must maintain for such celebrations is too expensive.

At its peak, the garden was a tribute to a great love, much like the Taj Mahal, said Gurkin's sister, Chloe Tuttle, who has turned the family homeplace across the street into the Big Mill Bed and Breakfast.

``After 40 years, he couldn't stand to be out of her sight,'' she said. ``He was just adoring of her.''

River birches thrived with nandina, cedars, dogwoods and the 75 to 100 rose bushes that were Red's favorites. John and his sons mulched and mowed, fertilized and sprayed as John ignored Red's deathbed advice: Don't let the garden get too big, you won't be able to handle it.

More importantly, she said, don't pine for me. Live your life.

He ignored both admonitions, tending the garden and missing Red. He added the photograph and the marble sign. Other signs posted throughout the garden: ``Today, Tomorrow and Forever. John Loves 'Red''' and ``Welcome to Red's Garden.''

They met in April 1951, when he had an appendectomy at Brown Community Hospital in Williamston the day before he was supposed to ship out to Korea. ``When I went under, she was the last thing I saw,'' he said. ``When I woke up, she was the first thing I saw.''

It took maybe a week for him to fall head over heels in love, and the two were married in August 1951. John was taken aback that a woman like Red would fall for him. She was a popular girl who had been engaged a time or two, but never married. John was a self-described country bumpkin lacking in social graces.

Red ``could have been at ease in the White House as well as a country hoe-down -- it didn't make any difference,'' he said.

There's one perfect person for everyone in a lifetime, and the few lucky ones find each other. ``There's no one else even comes close to her,'' he said.

Her finest quality was her unselfishness, he said. ``Even when she was real bad off, she never worried about herself. She worried about me.''

Red died a few months shy of their 45th wedding anniversary.

In the seven years since, John has regained his balance, replacing his love of gardening with his love of dancing, a pastime that he and Red enjoyed. The shag, fox-trot, two-step and cha-cha take him to dances across eastern North Carolina as a member of a singles club.

His ``main girlfriend'' is 46 years old, and he speaks of visiting other ``friends'' in Lagrange and Goldsboro and other small towns.

``One of my hobbies now is dancing, and I don't have time (for the garden),'' said Gurkin, a 73-year-old retired farmer who owns 500 acres of land along Big Mill Road. ``We used to have flowers by the hundreds. But I quit messing with them because it got to be such a job.''

Still, visitors will find the remnants of a tribute to love. Four life-sized Greek-style marble statues grace an arbor. Another statue of a woman stands alone, near statues of a buck and doe. Ivy has overtaken wooden benches that once provided a place to sit and wonder at the beauty. The wooden signs are cracking, nails falling out, and Red's photograph has faded -- John talks now about removing it altogether.

Just one of Red's beloved rose bushes remains.

None of this means John's love for Red has lessened, merely that he is following her advice at last and moving on. ``You never forget, but you learn to accept it,'' he said.

His home beside the garden provides further evidence of his loyalty to Red's memory. It includes 335 blown-up snapshots of Red with signs over them that read, ``There are angels. John married one'' and ``My Last Breath Will Be I Luv Red.''

``A friend told me this wasn't normal,'' John said, waving his arm at the photos. ``But I never have been normal.''

So even though he dances now instead of gardening and has more than one girlfriend, Red still rules his heart: ``Most of what I ended up being came from her.''

Creativity as an Ingredient of Madness - Art of the Insane show in Paris

Unabridged and unedited version at
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/06/arts/des...nted=print&position=

Creativity as an Ingredient of Madness - Art of the Insane show in Paris
By ALAN RIDING
August 06, 2003

PARIS ? Always mysterious, the creative process becomes still more inscrutable when the artist in question is of unbalanced mind. Yet, as with van Gogh, perhaps the most telling example, visual art is a form of expression that often appeals to those suffering from mental illness. Indeed, for more than a century, psychiatric hospitals have tried both to understand and treat their patients using art as therapy.

By the 1930's in France, l'art des fous, or art of the insane, began to interest art critics as well as medical researchers. The Surrealists in particular concluded that, like their own painting and poetry, l'art des fous seemed to tap usually unexplored areas of the brain. The French painter Jean Dubuffet developed this idea in the 1940's when he incorporated l'art des fous into what he called art brut, or raw art, which also included naïve and primitive painting.

Then in 1950, the Ste.-Anne Hospital here organized an exhibition of "psychopathological art" from 17 countries. Subsequently donated to the hospital, these paintings, watercolors and drawings helped found a collection that numbers 70,000 objects. A selection of 117 of these are now in a fascinating show called "La Clé des Champs" at the Jeu de Paume here through Sept. 28.

Twinned with "La Clé des Champs," a French expression for freedom, there is a more astonishing retrospective of 79 works by Arthur Bispo do Rosário, a self-taught Brazilian artist who died in 1989 after spending five decades in a Rio de Janeiro mental institution. His art was largely unknown abroad until it was displayed in the Brazilian pavilion at the Venice Biennale of 1995.

"La Clé des Champs," which takes its title from a book by the Surrealist leader André Breton, supports Dubuffet's thesis that l'art des fous is not a separate category. "Our point of view is that the role of art is always the same," Dubuffet wrote in 1949, "and there is no more `art des fous' than there is art of dyspeptics or of those with bad knees."

Many of the psychiatric patients in the show were already artists, and aware of prevailing art trends. Claude Brun, for instance, signed one work "Brun-Picasso." Work done by patients practicing art for the first time frequently evokes, say, Chagall, Kandinsky, Klee, Miró and Ernst.

"La Clé des Champs," which displays the art as it might be presented in any group show, offers no details on the circumstances of each artist. Only a handful ? Maurice Blin, Auguste Millet, Marija Novakovic and Charles Schley ? are known in art circles, but even their work is new to most visitors. Thus the art alone speaks here. The challenge is to decipher the minds and meanings behind the art.

Blin, who died in 1980 after spending 40 years in the Ste.-Anne Hospital, is among the show's more eclectic artists. He filled notebooks with sketches and calculations and added words to his art. "Follow a woman and she will flee," he wrote on one. "Flee a woman and she will follow you like a shadow." Some works show Chagall-like floating figures; others are erotic, like a rendering of Saturn making love to Earth.

A number of artists appear to have found solace in botanical drawings, but others seem to be telling stories. One untitled anonymous painting from Japan shows a long-haired woman struggling to stay afloat in rough waves, while Aloïse Corbaz's "Coupole Fédérale" is a naïve portrait of a women with a red heart on her chest. Solange Germain uses words to explain her Matisse-like gouache: "A flower that bleeds."

The variety in "La Clé des Champs" dispenses with the notion that l'art des fous has any single source of inspiration. In the Bispo do Rosário retrospective, however, it is hard not to be drawn into the world of a man who apparently saw his life as a mission to save the world. His objects may at times recall Duchamp and others, but there is no evidence that he considered his work to be art. As a patient, he refused to join art therapy classes.

Born in northeastern Brazil in 1909 or 1911, he spent eight years in the Brazilian Navy as a young man, based in Rio de Janeiro. On Dec. 22, 1938, he had a vision of Christ and seven angels, and two days later, he presented himself at a monastery. From there, he was sent to a hospital where his diagnosis was paranoid schizophrenia. Eventually, he was permanently interned in a psychiatric hospital outside Rio.

Since his work was recognized as art only after his death, it is undated and therefore impossible to arrange in chronological order. The only clue is to be found in the name "Rosângela Maria" that appears in some tapestries: she was a young psychiatry student who worked in the hospital in 1981 and befriended Bispo do Rosário. But today she can offer no insight into what motivated his art.

"He refused to deal with the doctors and gradually became more and more isolated, working compulsively," said Agustín Arteaga, a Mexican art curator who helped organize this show. "He was mystically driven, preoccupied with the final judgment, recording everything and everyone in order to save them."

Bispo do Rosário created objects and installations with whatever he could find in the hospital. His complex tapestries, embroidered with blue threads taken from patients' uniforms, combine lists of names or descriptions of hospital activities with designs of ships, geometric shapes, maps, flags, streets and buildings. His magnificent "Ceremonial Gown," with its description of the world, was supposedly to be worn when he entered heaven.

One work comprises rudimentary scepters and sashes for five beauty contest "misses" representing Amazonia, Mexico, France, Japan and Peru; each sash carries a flag as well as the names of towns. A still larger work, "Romeo and Juliet's Bed," shows a bed covered with a mosquito net and draped with colored lengths of wool.

His works most evoke Duchamp when he finds ways of organizing and presenting discarded material and objects, from carton, wood, tin and metal, to plastic toys, kitchenware, clothes and shoes. He had an affection for building little carts on wheels: in multiple forms, sometimes on three levels, they carry square stones, plastic cars and small ships.

His installations variously display boots, straw hats, cutlery, plastic bottles filled with confetti, slippers, and combs and brushes. There are specific objects he has reimagined, like "Toilet," which has a bedpan inside a wooden box, and "Macumba," which displays objects used in Afro-Brazilian spiritist rituals.

Bispo do Rosário may have been simply recording the world as he saw it; yet he brought order to disorder, beauty to detritus. In a pre-Duchampian world, this might not have been considered as art. Today, it would be called conceptual art. And while Bispo do Rosário's own concept remains a mystery, his work stands as art because it transforms the ordinary into the extraordinary.