Marvin Gaye's legendary album, "What's Going On," released 40 years ago this month; and...

          Now, it's 40 years later. One ought well ask, again, today, now, with Gaye's lyrics in mind... what's going on?

     Gaye's album appeared during tremendous political and social chaos in the United States (and by extension, worldwide). The civil rights movement was dying a slow death. MLK Jr. was no more, and... neither was Bobby Kennedy. Richard Nixon had been elected president. The Vietnam War still raged despite its growing unpopularity. Millions of people in Southeast Asia were dead, and 50,000 U.S. soldiers dead as well. The "war on poverty" was over. Poverty's troops had won; riots had broken out in inner cities as a result with little course change.

     Marvin Gaye's album dropped into this, my, America on May 21, 1971.

     "What's Going On" cried for a world where war was not the answer; one where only love could conquer hatred. Quite the record.  "Inner City Blues" dealt with the problems of urban America. "Save the Children" focused on the children of the world. "Mercy, Mercy, Me" condemned environmental destruction. And etc.

     40 years later?

     We (the U.S.; the world) are still engaged in wars abroad that have (for good or naught) taken a huge financial and human toll. Today, racism still lurks beneath the surface (decidedly not good) of this, of my, America; and poverty and economic inequality remain with us around the globe... and corporate interests continue to (needlessly) destroy the environment.

      Indeed, what's goin' on?

     Pull out that old LP and listen again my friends; it's well time. Overdue, in fact.  Time, yes:  time, these two score years later.

Stephen Hawkings likely is correct; at the same time:

      "I believe that man will not merely endure. He will prevail. 

       He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance."


-American author, Nobel, Pulitzer, etc., Prize winner, William Faulkner

A FRENCHMAN was arrested yesterday in Poland...

for stealing two pieces of barbed wire from the Nazi German-era death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau officials said.  The man, in his fifties, was detained after a scanner detected the wire in his hand luggage during a security check at the airport in Krakow, 60 kilometres from the site of the camp.

     "He admitted having taken the pieces as a souvenir of his visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau," said airport spokesman Marcin Pulit.  The man's name was not disclosed.

     Jaroslaw Mensfelt, spokesman of the Polish state-run memorial and museum at the site, condemned the theft.  "This was an act of desecration of a place of memory. Every object here is priceless," he said.

     Auschwitz-Birkenau has become an enduring symbol of the Holocaust, Nazi Germany's wartime campaign of genocide against Europe's Jews.  A year after invading Poland in 1939, the Nazis opened what became a vast complex on the edge of the southern town of Oswiecim - Auschwitz in German.  They later expanded it at the nearby village of Brzezinka, or Birkenau.

     Of the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust, one million were murdered at the site, mostly in its notorious gas chambers, along with tens of thousands of others including Poles, Roma and Soviet prisoners of war.

Philip Roth, giant of American letters, has won the 2011 Man Booker International award.

The author, a perennial contender for the Nobel prize in literature, Pulitzer Prize Award winner, National Book Award winner, etc., was named winner of the Man Booker International at the Sydney Writers' Festival today, beating a stellar, if eclectic, shortlist. Also in the running were the British children's author Philip Pullman, award-winning Chinese writer Su Tong, American authors Anne Tyler and Marilynne Robinson, Australia's David Malouf and a reluctant John le Carré who had asked – unsuccessfully – for his name to be withdrawn from contention.  Announcing the winner, Rick Gekoski, chair of the judges, said that for 50 years, Roth's books have "stimulated, provoked and amused an enormous, and still expanding, audience".

Recommended organization/resource...

     As the largest and most comprehensive center of its kind in the nation, Minnesota Center for Book Arts (MCBA) celebrates the book as a vibrant contemporary art form that takes many shapes. From the traditional crafts of papermaking, letterpress printing and bookbinding to experimental artmaking and self-publishing techniques, MCBA supports the limitless creative evolution of book arts.

     In 1983, a group of book arts practitioners and enthusiasts in the Twin Cities began plans to create an institution, a true book arts center, where artists could create, students could learn, fine art could be exhibited, and a generally under-acknowledged artistic discipline could be elevated into focus and take its proper place in the Minnesota arts community. Two years later, in 1985, this dedicated group opened the doors of the brand new Minnesota Center for Book Arts. MCBA's first public home was in the McKesson Building, on North Third Street in the Warehouse District of downtown Minneapolis.     

     After more than two years of research and planning, the Spring of 2000 saw Minnesota Center for Book Arts, The Loft Literary Center and Milkweed Editions become the principal tenants in the Open Book Building at 1011 South Washington Avenue in Minneapolis. The building creates a lively destination for a diverse public interested in books, book arts and literary endeavors of all kinds.

     The soul of MCBA is the studio spaces where you find masters and novices working at letterpress printing, hand bookbinding and papermaking. In addition to the studios, there is an exhibition space, a studio shop, an archive and reference library, and offices. Visitors are welcome to observe the book art activity close-up. MCBA serves artists, students, teachers, designers, writers, families, youth, and book lovers through a variety of participatory programs. More than 20 years after opening its doors, MCBA is the most comprehensive independent book arts center in the nation.

Picasso painted a famous portrait of her...

   Jacques Lipchitz did her imposing features in bronze.

   She was the subject of prints by Andy Warhol and Red Grooms.

   She made the cover of Time magazine.

   Best remembered now for her form-stretching prose, widely quoted apercus and bohemian panache, Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) was dominant in her day as a force majeure in the visual culture of expatriate Paris. A big part of that story has to do with the stellar modern art collection she and other members of her family accumulated and displayed in their Paris apartments.

   An exhibition devoted to the Stein collections, which includes Picasso's great Gertrude portrait, opens this week at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

   "Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories," which premiered last week at the nearby Contemporary Jewish Museum, offers a probing and intimate perspective on the visual realm Stein herself inhabited, projected and created. Comprising numerous formal portraits, photographs of her at home, clothing, domestic objects from her life with her longtime partner, Alice B. Toklas, rare film footage, books, theater posters and more, the show explores what co-curator Wanda M. Corn calls "the complexity of Gertrude Stein as a personage."

   The exhibition, a joint venture with the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, is divided into five sections, or what Corn regards as "at least five stories about Stein we don't know."

Some news am not sure what to make of...

     This week saw a rare find off Cape Cod as fishermen caught a yellow lobster.

     The crustacean was delivered to the Lobster Pot Restaurant in East Wareham. 

     Yellow lobsters are the result of a rare genetic mutation. The odds of finding one are 1 in 30 million.

     Owners of the restaurant will not be cooking the lobster (they assert). It is being donated to the National Marine Fisheries Service for their Woods Hole aquarium and research center.

Especially today...

     Rita Sue (nee Rothberg) Young (1928-2002).  I really, really miss you, mom!

3.2 Million Opening Bid...

Still, we are talking of the auction of The Château des Thons, a French import, and quite the residence.

     At the end of a long driveway in Long Island, winding uphill through dense woods stands a clearing. There a cobblestone courtyard leads to a castle with two ivy-clad turrets. A family crest is carved in the stone above the imposing 10-foot-high paneled front doors in the entry tower. Limestone balustrades edge the veranda, leading to formal gardens with spouting fountains. A lead-domed wishing well and whimsical stone statuary lend an enchanting aura to the walled garden.

   It IS quite the scene; later today, I will try and upload a picture of said Château.


   The Château des Thons originally went up in the 18th century near Dijon, France. In 1927 the financier Ashbel Barney had a wing of it shipped across the Atlantic and rebuilt here as a memorial to his son who'd served in France in WWI. It is known as Voltaire’s Castle... after the French philosopher.


   An aristocratic history but a melancholy fate. After more than two decades of being listed/ relisted by its owner, Stephen Brown — first for $30 million — the château is to hit the luxury auction block at noon on May 15, with a minimum opening bid of $3.2 million. (The auctioneer is out of Manhattan Beach, Calif.).  Mr. Brown, 73, bought the castle in 1987 for his bride at the time (he has had three), who “decided she wanted to live in baronial style” with “visions of a Rolls-Royce crunching up the driveway.” The couple drew up plans for renovation but broke up shortly thereafter. She moved to the West Coast, he to Manhattan. "I'm not enamored of living in the suburbs,” Mr. Brown's said [rather dryly, methinks].


   The turreted château became a model for other houses in this neighborhood once laden with Vanderbilts, Pratts, Woolworths and other tycoons has 6 bedrooms and 6 1/2 baths, along with herringbone floors and a 300-year-old banister. The kitchen has been updated, the dining room embellished with a mirrored and coffered ceiling. Leopard-print carpeting runs up the curved front turret staircase into the master bedroom suite. The his-and-hers baths were recently renovated in white marble. The swimming pool, hidden within a series of hedges, was retiled last year.



   The decision to delist and instead auction the house was made after Mr. Brown's home in the Malibu colony, CA auctioned in February for $5 million. “In this economy,” he said, “houses are not moving in the traditional manner through real estate brokers [...] the auction is very powerful,” The winning bid commands an 8 percent buyers premium and a 10 percent deposit. Mr. Brown says he is confident that the gavel will end his involvement with the château. Without disclosing the reserve price, he added, “I will take whatever the market decides it’s worth.”

Osama Bin Laden’s...

violent anti-modern brand of Islam has little to do with the Middle Ages, Eli Lehrer -- Frum Forum -- opines... as medieval Muslims were, mostly, more tolerant than their Christian counterparts, he asserts.

     Still, a glance at his hideout’s floor plan reveals some real similarities to a western European medieval siege castle. (And bear, e.g., some resemblance to Richard the Lionheart’s famous Chateau Gaillard in France)

     Although the building techniques were a lot different, the hideout had "all the basic feature" of the medieval castle: There's a central “keep,” outer, middle and inner wards for defense and even a “curtain wall” (which the Washington Post labels a “privacy wall”) around the “keep."

     Whoever designed it likely absorbed some of the ideas of medieval castle building.

     Though we may indeed never know more than this supposition.

Other things to celebrate than a U.S.-sanctioned assassination...

   National Hamburger Month has arrived (well, I am excited... shh!!). At least let me honor my Midwestern roots noting that we have White Castle to thank for this chance to be bovine-ly celebratory in May.
You see, White Castle, recognized as America’s first fast food chain, started National Hamburger Month back in 1992. 

   And, hear this:  White Castle turned 90 on March 10th; and still offers the small thin, square patty hamburger known as The Original Slider. (Topped with onions and pickles and sitting on a steamed bun, White Castles sliders have gained what insiders call "a loyal following known as Cravers." In 2001, White Castle launched the Cravers Hall of Fame, in which a select number of Cravers are inducted each year based upon entries judged by “brand loyalty, creative presentation, originality and magnitude of the crave”.)

   And, so?

   White Castle began in 1921 when Billy Ingram and Walter Anderson (fine boys, both) scraped together $700 to open a small hamburger stand in Wichita, Kansas. The rest is Slider history.  Besides giving birth to the fast food industry and standardization, White Castle is also credited with a number of other (if perhaps dubious; at least a few I say!) firsts.  They were the first chain to package burgers in cardboard cartons for takeout, the first to advertise in newspapers, the first to run a coupon campaign and the first to market square burgers and use perforated burgers for even cooking. 

   The number of restaurants does not compare in size-wise to the thousands of locations of many other chains, but (in part) this is due (so goes the company lore) to the fact that each location is company owned and not franchised.

   White Castle helped make the hamburger America’s favorite food, and changed the dining habits of a nation (is this a good thing?).  And... 90 years later, it still serves up a mean slider (okay, not all bad!).

Hmm...

"I hold that the parentheses are by far the most important parts of a non-business letter."
Letter to Blanche Jennings, 15 April 1908, Letters of D.H. Lawrence (1979), James T. Boulton, ed.