Celebrated Tamil and Hindi film actress, classical dancer/singer/choreographer, and research scholar, wife of Dr. Bali of Chennai, twice elected to the Lok Sabha (Lower house of Indian parliament) and appointed to the Rajya Sabha (upper house), Dr. Vyjayanthimala Bali(VIE-juh-yun-thee-mah-lah Bah-lee). [born, August 13, 1936]
Since the Western media doesn’t educate so much as propagandize in favor of western state interests, and in service of those interests misrepresents the cultures that get in its way as inferior or degraded, I decided that I would add a category to my blog – desi beauties – to celebrate beautiful brilliant women who exemplify the best Indian tradition.
I sought a theme and sought for it in vain,
I sought it daily for six weeks or so.
Maybe at last, being but a broken man, I must be satisfied with my heart, although
Winter and summer till old age began
My circus animals were all on show,
Those stilted boys, that burnished chariot,
Lion and woman and the Lord knows what.
What can I but enumerate old themes,
First that sea-rider Oisin led by the nose
Through three enchanted islands, allegorical dreams, Vain gaiety, vain battle, vain repose,
Themes of the embittered heart, or so it seems,
That might adorn old songs or courtly shows;
But what cared I that set him on to ride,
I, starved for the bosom of his faery bride.
And then a counter-truth filled out its play,
‘The Countess Cathleen’ was the name I gave it; She, pity-crazed, had given her soul away,
But masterful Heaven had intervened to save it.
I thought my dear must her own soul destroy
So did fanaticism and hate enslave it,
And this brought forth a dream and soon enough
This dream itself had all my thought and love.
And when the Fool and Blind Man stole the bread
Cuchulain fought the ungovernable sea;
Heart-mysteries there, and yet when all is said
It was the dream itself enchanted me: Character isolated by a deed
To engross the present and dominate memory. Players and painted stage took all my love,
And notthose things that they were emblems of.
Those masterful images because complete
Grew in pure mind, but out of what began?
A mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street,
Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can,
Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slut
Who keeps the till. Now that my ladder’s gone, I must lie down where all the ladders start
In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.
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William Butler Yeats wrote “The Circus Animals’ Desertion” toward the end of his life, in a moment of insight into the limits of aesthetic pursuits. The poem speaks equally to the limits of ideology.
Classically trained Greek popular singer Nana Mouskouri , whose father was part of the anti-Nazi resistance in Athens, sings “Je Chante Avec Toi,” using the music of “Va Pensiero” from Verdi’s opera Nabucco (Nebuchadnezzar).
Modern Art Obsession has a post from April 2009 (see below) about Steve Cohen exhibiting a collection of his art at Sotheby’s, (where he is the third largest owner). The exhibition ran exactly at the same time as Sotheby´s Spring Modern and Contemporary Auction. The Cohen art was not for sale.
Quote:
“So.. we guess there are other ways to dump an art collection skin a cat.
Hmmm… Maybe the page from the Billionaire Art Opportunist Collector playbook could be :
Step 1.. Buy lots of Art, push prices way up, and tell everyone who’ll listenin the media you’re a wise long term buyer.
(Photo #1, Richard Prince, “Graduate Nurse, 2002”,Ink jet print and acrylic on canvas,89 in x 52 in. FYI… A description from Sotheby’s.. “This work is one of the best paintings Prince ever made, particularly because of its monumental scale and the rich, painterly quality of the brushstrokes”)
Step 2.. Buy an art auction house (or a Whopping controlling interest in one),
Step 3.. Stage a show of the great works having auction house experts tout your collection..
Step 4..Tell everyone these art works, on proud display, are not for sale
Step 5… Wait for someone stupid enough to say.. I wish I could have a collection like the one by this well known art collector, which just happens to be on display in the auction house.
Step 6.. To be determined…. Hmm.. possibly.. Cash out..??
Note: Cohen’s SAC Capital amassed its position in Sotheby’s in the 6 months upto March 31, 2009, and Sotheby’s shares doubled by June 2009 from a low in February.
The fund acquired its Sotheby’s stake between September and April, a period in which the auction house’s stock was battered by the financial crisis and a shrinking art market. The share price was below $10 for much of that period, down from a high of $61.40 at the end of the boom. This spring, the stock rebounded somewhat – it was $14.48 a share on June 30, so SAC’s sale of its roughly four million shares was likely to have netted several million dollars
Adagio en Mi Pais (Adagio in My Country), written and sung by Alfredo Zitarossa.
Zitarossa was a beloved and important Uruguayan composer, poet, singer, and journalist, who was ostracized for his involvement with the Frente Amplio of the left, during the 1970s, at the time when the military junta (with its torturous secret police) came to power in Uruguay. Zitarossa’s songs were banned in the Southern Cone countries and he himself was forced to live in exile in Argentina, Spain, and Mexico. He died young in 1989 at the age of 52. The most characteristic voice of resistance in Uruguay’s second “independence,” he makes a good subject for a post on Independence Day (Dia de la Independencia) , which happens to be today.
Behind every door
my people are alert,
and no one can silence their song,
and tomorrow they will sing again.
In my country we are tough,
the future will show that.
A bit of history: Uruguay won its independence from a triangular war between Spain, Argentina, and Brazil between 1825 and 1828. As the second smallest country in South America (after Surinam) it’s still somewhat overshadowed by its giant neighbors, Argentina and Brazil, with whom it shares it western and northern borders respectively.
Uruguay has many things to recommend it to a libertarian temperament. It’s a small country. The culture is unpretentious and laid back. It’s the home of the gaucho, the ferociously independent vagabond cowboy of South America. And the national motto, Libertad o Muerte (Liberty or Death) echoes Patrick Henry’s famous words (“Give me liberty or give me death”) before the Virginia Convention in 1775.
It’s traditional to go out on the night before Dia de la Independencia and I made it to a neighbor’s asado (barbecue). According to the Uruguayans, the asado, mate (the ubiquitous herbal tea that is sipped through a straw), and tango all come from Uruguay, not Argentina. Of course, in Argentina, you hear another story.
The asador did a fine job with the wood fire that cooks the meat. I took a shot at it too. The idea is to spread out the embers as they fall through the grate of the parrilla (grill)* from the log fire. Too many in one place and the meat gets burned. Too few and it doesn’t cook. Most of our guests wanted their meat – the world-famous Uruguayan organic beef – well done, so the asador and I were quite busy. The beef cut is called tira de asado (a cut from the ribs) and is mixed with other kinds of meat, like chorizo (sausage). We served the asado with chimichurri – a relish from oil, oregano, garlic, and chopped belly peppers – and with baguettes and clerico (made by mixing fruit drinks and wine).
*The term parrilla is also used, by analogy, to refer to torture and to the torture-rack, which were wide-spread in the 1970s and 1980s in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and Brazil…..
For the role of the US in fostering the routine use of torture in Uruguay, read this piece by Bill Blum.
