Gaia Community: Ramsses' Blog

My Bird

http://Ramsses.gaia.com — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 02:37:35 GMT

The parrot loves me. Yes, she does. My little sweetie. We're best friends now. She even lets me caress her. Others have won that corrupt heart in a day. Not me. It took me years to win that heart of stone. That bird hated me so much she would glare at me and tremble with rage. If she was standing in the open cage door when I came by, she would step back inside and pull it shut. She shit deliberately when I leaned in to look at her, and would snatch contemptuously at my offerings and fling them away if they weren't good enough, eat them if they were, or just keep accidentally dropping them in the shit at the bottom of the cage when she had had her fill. My devotion was unshaken. She was my beautiful bird. I told her of my love. Some day she would be mine. It mattered not how long I waited. I would wait forever.

Although there are some cynics who have have suggested that the bird is friendly now only because Loreli has been away, I know that this is not the real reason. Loreli is a witch who put nasty thoughts in that bird's head. I have found true love.

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The Indian Air Force

http://Ramsses.gaia.com — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 04:26:25 GMT

As befits a strange story, it begins strangely. An Indian air force pilot on a routine reconnaissance flight over the Himalayas espies an antique monastery clinging to a peak in the middle of nowhere and comes in close for a better view. The moment is soon forgotten but has been recorded in a quick succession of shots that so fascinates the military brass the pilot is called in for questioning. Did he have any idea what he had photographed? He is handed photos of a yogi meditating in lotus, so oblivious to the world he takes no notice of a jet streaking by on a strafing run. All around him at a distance of some feet the ice and snow has been melted away from the sheer heat he is generating. This is high altitude Himalayas. Brutal cold. Unimaginable heat. For all that this implies, defense has a vested interest in that sort of power. The military brass would like to learn a thing or two from that yogi.

They never did, but the story got out. And so it was that I found myself trekking through the Himalayas.

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Shakespeare's Portrait

http://Ramsses.gaia.com — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 23:39:28 GMT

LONDON, England (CNN) -- A portrait painted 400 years ago and kept anonymously in an Irish home for much of the time since is now believed to be the only painting of William Shakespeare created during his lifetime.

The image reveals a wealthy Shakespeare of high social status, contradicting the popular view of a struggling playwright of humble status, according to Stanley Wells, a professor who chairs London's Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.

Wells, a distinguished Shakespeare scholar, arranged for three years of research and scientific testing which confirmed it was painted around 1610, when Shakespeare would have been 46 years old.

"A rather young looking 46, it has to be said," Wells said. Shakespeare died in 1616.

The Cobbe portrait -- named after the Irish family that owns the painting -- shows Shakespeare with rosy cheeks, a full head of hair, and a reddish brown beard.

The most common portrait of Shakespeare is a gray image showing a bald Bard with a small mustache and beard, and bags under his eyes.

The identity of the man in the portrait was lost over the centuries -- until Alec Cobbe saw a portrait from Washington's Folger Shakespeare Library. That painting, which fell into disfavor as a Shakespeare portrait about 70 years ago, turned out to be one of four copies of Cobbe's portrait.

The portrait "shows a man wearing expensive costuming, including a very beautifully painted ruff of Italian lacework which would have been very expensive," Wells said.

"It establishes, for me, that Shakespeare in his later years was a rather wealthy, a rather well affluent member of aristocratic circles in the society of his time," Wells said.

"There's been too much of a tendency to believe that Shakespeare, being the son of a glover, coming for a small town in the middle of England, that he necessarily retained a rather humble status throughout his life."

Wells reads even more into what he sees in Shakespeare's newly-found face.

"I think it's plausible as a portrait as a good listener, of somebody who would have been capable of writing the plays, clearly the face of a man of high intelligence," he said.

"It's the face of a man, I think, who betrays a good deal of wisdom in his features. But, of course, as somebody (King Duncan) says in Shakespeare's story Macbeth, 'there's no art to find the mind's construction in the face.'"

It should be noted that Shakespeare's King Duncan paid a price for judging Macbeth to have the face of an honorable man. Macbeth later murdered the king.

The public can read Shakespeare's face from the original painting at Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford-upon-Avon where it goes on display for several months starting April 23.

The portrait then returns to the Cobbe family, which inherited it when an ancestor married England's Earl of Southampton -- a friend of Shakespeare who likely commissioned its painting.

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