Jason Baskin + Sharon Curtiss = The Gem Vault
www.thegemvault.com
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Chris Anderson's Free = Free
SXSWi: Chris Anderson's Free Will Be Free
http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2009/03/anderson-kawasa.html
Converting users of a free version of a product to a paid version is the key to making money on a free product. The sweet spot is 5 percent.
- Chris Anderson
Useful links:
www.thelongtail.com
www.guykawasaki.com
http://sxsw.com/interactive
I agree with Chris. The word 'Free' has double meaning in English. Thank you for the insight.
http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2009/03/anderson-kawasa.html
Converting users of a free version of a product to a paid version is the key to making money on a free product. The sweet spot is 5 percent.
- Chris Anderson
Useful links:
www.thelongtail.com
www.guykawasaki.com
http://sxsw.com/interactive
I agree with Chris. The word 'Free' has double meaning in English. Thank you for the insight.
Asian Film Awards 2009
Asian Film Awards 2009
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123638486847658215.html#articleTabs_interactive%26articleTabs%3Dinteractive
Useful link:
www.asianfilmawards.org
Great review.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123638486847658215.html#articleTabs_interactive%26articleTabs%3Dinteractive
Useful link:
www.asianfilmawards.org
Great review.
We Tell Stories
Win for UK story-telling website
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7947729.stm
Useful links:
www.sixtostart.com
http://wetellstories.co.uk
www.sxsw.com
www.argn.com
Technology + Fantastic experiences = Alternate reality games (ARG). ARG is a great way of telling stories. Hats off to Dan/Adrian.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7947729.stm
Useful links:
www.sixtostart.com
http://wetellstories.co.uk
www.sxsw.com
www.argn.com
Technology + Fantastic experiences = Alternate reality games (ARG). ARG is a great way of telling stories. Hats off to Dan/Adrian.
CIBJO Update
CIBJO has launched a dedicated website for the 2009 CIBJO Congress, which will be held in Istanbul, Turkey from May 3 - 5, 2009. Check out the link http://congress2009.cibjo.org
Diamond Definition
Responsible Jewellery Council amends Diamond Definition
http://www.responsiblejewellery.com/downloads/RJC_Amends_Diamond_Definition.pdf
Useful links:
www.responsiblejewellery.com
www.unglobalcompact.org
http://www.responsiblejewellery.com/downloads/RJC_Amends_Diamond_Definition.pdf
Useful links:
www.responsiblejewellery.com
www.unglobalcompact.org
In The New York Statue Of Liberty
Melech Ravitch, born in Eastern Europe in 1893, emigrated to the New World at the beginning of the century. On his way to Ellis Island, where new immigrants disembarked, he passed the Statue of Liberty. Years later, he composed this poem about its meaning and promise.
In the New York Statue of Liberty
I am a man of blood, flesh and bone.
My soul is love, laughter and tears.
And you? Woman, hollow, steel giant
With the torch in your right hand high,
You are a golden woman, with a tinny skin
Taut over a steel skeleton.
Your tin lips have never kissed bread.
Your iron ribs have never cradled a man in bed.
And…..I love you with your young love, flaming and tender.
Thirty years of my youth, and manhood I yearned,
For your first glance pined.
I am a poet and a wanderer and a Jew.
The steps to my soul are trembling strophes of my verse.
And to yours—which is only one of millions of heads—
To your head and thought, hundreds of stairs of iron.
Empty is your soul: winter—cold, summer—hot, as in any edifice of tin.
And yet this is so enormous and so wonderful
In your soul, with hundreds of others on stairs to wander and tire
And sing in oneself a glowing, warmly human love song
To you! That in your veins of wire and of steel
Flow electric lights, instead of living blood
While you are golem only, monument of Liberty, symbol…
And while you are golem, symbol, Liberty’s monument.
I’m writing this song in love and youthful excitement. My hand trembles,
Sparkle the eyes, burns the blood.
Believe me, lady, when I pressed my lips to your tin walls
And to the walls of your proud neck and—hidden—secretly kissed them,
That no one should see and say maybe, a poet insane perhaps.
This was the love of purest spirit.
Like a love song—this pitifully sincere song;
While never did I so love,
Never, any woman so
As the Liberty that to you once and for all
Was granted the right the symbol to be.
Your torch is directed
To New York, but your light burns
To all the ends of the world.
One blesses and one curses you,
One honors and another hates,
One is earnest, another frivolous.
And I have purely love and faith
For curse and hatred are wind, sawdust.
Oh, is it true, you woman, you freedom, you’re today a fallen woman,
And perhaps—perhaps because of that is my love for you so tender and so deep.
In your tin belly, you tin symbol,
Are you pregnant with the new savior of the worlds.
They may laugh at you, they may curse you—
You, only you, will bear him in light and in faith.
On your hands will you him—your son—
Like the torch above, raise high over all mankind.
And laugh will he who now weeps.
And weep he who curses.
Now.
United.
Led by a child.
Liberty, beloved, yours, only yours, only your son
Will be the savior of the world.
A son of the spirit of all in love with you!
Oh, also shall the breath of this love song, in love to you conceived,
Be then a part of the spirit that impregnated you.
I loved this poem.
In the New York Statue of Liberty
I am a man of blood, flesh and bone.
My soul is love, laughter and tears.
And you? Woman, hollow, steel giant
With the torch in your right hand high,
You are a golden woman, with a tinny skin
Taut over a steel skeleton.
Your tin lips have never kissed bread.
Your iron ribs have never cradled a man in bed.
And…..I love you with your young love, flaming and tender.
Thirty years of my youth, and manhood I yearned,
For your first glance pined.
I am a poet and a wanderer and a Jew.
The steps to my soul are trembling strophes of my verse.
And to yours—which is only one of millions of heads—
To your head and thought, hundreds of stairs of iron.
Empty is your soul: winter—cold, summer—hot, as in any edifice of tin.
And yet this is so enormous and so wonderful
In your soul, with hundreds of others on stairs to wander and tire
And sing in oneself a glowing, warmly human love song
To you! That in your veins of wire and of steel
Flow electric lights, instead of living blood
While you are golem only, monument of Liberty, symbol…
And while you are golem, symbol, Liberty’s monument.
I’m writing this song in love and youthful excitement. My hand trembles,
Sparkle the eyes, burns the blood.
Believe me, lady, when I pressed my lips to your tin walls
And to the walls of your proud neck and—hidden—secretly kissed them,
That no one should see and say maybe, a poet insane perhaps.
This was the love of purest spirit.
Like a love song—this pitifully sincere song;
While never did I so love,
Never, any woman so
As the Liberty that to you once and for all
Was granted the right the symbol to be.
Your torch is directed
To New York, but your light burns
To all the ends of the world.
One blesses and one curses you,
One honors and another hates,
One is earnest, another frivolous.
And I have purely love and faith
For curse and hatred are wind, sawdust.
Oh, is it true, you woman, you freedom, you’re today a fallen woman,
And perhaps—perhaps because of that is my love for you so tender and so deep.
In your tin belly, you tin symbol,
Are you pregnant with the new savior of the worlds.
They may laugh at you, they may curse you—
You, only you, will bear him in light and in faith.
On your hands will you him—your son—
Like the torch above, raise high over all mankind.
And laugh will he who now weeps.
And weep he who curses.
Now.
United.
Led by a child.
Liberty, beloved, yours, only yours, only your son
Will be the savior of the world.
A son of the spirit of all in love with you!
Oh, also shall the breath of this love song, in love to you conceived,
Be then a part of the spirit that impregnated you.
I loved this poem.
Sam Palka And David Vishkover
Isaac Bashevis Singer, born in Poland in 1904, emigrated to New York in 1935, when he began writing in Yiddish for the Jewish Daily Forward. He is the author of many novels and stories and winner of the 1978 Nobel Prize for literature. Translated by the author and Dorothea Straus.
6
Sam Palka winked and laughed. He puffed once on his extinguished cigar and threw it in the ashtray. He lit another and said, ‘You may call me a charlatan, but I have never been to tell her the truth. She loved David Vishkover, the poor man, the victim of a false wife, not Sam Palka, the landlord, the millionaire, the woman chaser, the gambler. Everything had to stay the same. I still visit on Blake Avenue. It has become almost completely black. It makes no difference to Channah Basha. ‘Here I have lived,’ she says, ‘and here I want to die.’ I come to her in the morning, spend the day with her—we take a walk and go to bed right after supper. I’m known there. The blacks and the Puerto Ricans say, ‘Hi Mr Vishkower.’ We still eat burned-flour grits, noodles with beans, kasha with milk, and we talk about the old country as though we had stepped off the ship just yesterday. It’s no longer a game. To her, Bessie is still alive, making me miserable. She thinks that I sustain myself on a small annuity from the insurance company and my Social Security. The buttons keep falling off the jacket and pants I wear, and Channah Basha continues to sew on others. She begs me to bring my shirts; she wants to wash them. She begs me bring her my shirts; she wants to wash them. She darns my socks. A pair of my pajamas that are twenty years old hang in her bathroom. Every time I come, I have to report about Bessie. Is she still so wicked? Haven’t the years softened her? I tell her that age doesn’t change character—once bad, always bad. Channah Basha asked me to buy a plot in the cemetery of the Wysoka landsleit so that when we die we can lie side by side. I did so, even though another plot awaits for me next to Bessie’s grave. I will have to die twice. When I die Channah Basha is going to be surprised by my legacy to her. I have made her the beneficiary of an insurance policy for fifty thousand dollars. The house on Blake Avenue will also be hers. But what will she do with it? There comes a day when money is useless. We are both on diets. She now cooks with vegetable oil instead of butter. I am afraid to eat a piece of babka—cholesterol.
One day I was sitting with Channah Basha and we were talking about olden days—how they used to bake matzo, send gifts on Purim, decorate the windowpanes for Shevuot—and suddenly she asked, ‘What is the matter with your wife? Will her end never come? I answered, ‘Weeds are hardy.’ Channah Basha said, ‘I would still like to be your wife before God and the people, even if only for one year.’
‘When I heard these words I was beside myself. I wanted to cry out,’ Channah Basha, my darling, no one stands in our way any more. Come with me to City Hall and we will get the license’. But this meant killing David Vishkower. Don’t laugh—he is a real person to me. I have lived with him so long that he is closer to me than Sam Palka. Who is Sam Palka? An old lecher who has made a fortune and doesn’t know what to do with it. David Vishkover is a man like my father, peace be with him. Well—and what would happen to Channah Basha if she should hear the truth? Instead of becoming Sam Palka’s wife, she would become David Vishkover’s widow.’
I love this story. This hilarious portrait of everyday Main Street characters rings as true today as it did when it was first published back then. The basics are the same and how little things change.
6
Sam Palka winked and laughed. He puffed once on his extinguished cigar and threw it in the ashtray. He lit another and said, ‘You may call me a charlatan, but I have never been to tell her the truth. She loved David Vishkover, the poor man, the victim of a false wife, not Sam Palka, the landlord, the millionaire, the woman chaser, the gambler. Everything had to stay the same. I still visit on Blake Avenue. It has become almost completely black. It makes no difference to Channah Basha. ‘Here I have lived,’ she says, ‘and here I want to die.’ I come to her in the morning, spend the day with her—we take a walk and go to bed right after supper. I’m known there. The blacks and the Puerto Ricans say, ‘Hi Mr Vishkower.’ We still eat burned-flour grits, noodles with beans, kasha with milk, and we talk about the old country as though we had stepped off the ship just yesterday. It’s no longer a game. To her, Bessie is still alive, making me miserable. She thinks that I sustain myself on a small annuity from the insurance company and my Social Security. The buttons keep falling off the jacket and pants I wear, and Channah Basha continues to sew on others. She begs me to bring my shirts; she wants to wash them. She begs me bring her my shirts; she wants to wash them. She darns my socks. A pair of my pajamas that are twenty years old hang in her bathroom. Every time I come, I have to report about Bessie. Is she still so wicked? Haven’t the years softened her? I tell her that age doesn’t change character—once bad, always bad. Channah Basha asked me to buy a plot in the cemetery of the Wysoka landsleit so that when we die we can lie side by side. I did so, even though another plot awaits for me next to Bessie’s grave. I will have to die twice. When I die Channah Basha is going to be surprised by my legacy to her. I have made her the beneficiary of an insurance policy for fifty thousand dollars. The house on Blake Avenue will also be hers. But what will she do with it? There comes a day when money is useless. We are both on diets. She now cooks with vegetable oil instead of butter. I am afraid to eat a piece of babka—cholesterol.
One day I was sitting with Channah Basha and we were talking about olden days—how they used to bake matzo, send gifts on Purim, decorate the windowpanes for Shevuot—and suddenly she asked, ‘What is the matter with your wife? Will her end never come? I answered, ‘Weeds are hardy.’ Channah Basha said, ‘I would still like to be your wife before God and the people, even if only for one year.’
‘When I heard these words I was beside myself. I wanted to cry out,’ Channah Basha, my darling, no one stands in our way any more. Come with me to City Hall and we will get the license’. But this meant killing David Vishkower. Don’t laugh—he is a real person to me. I have lived with him so long that he is closer to me than Sam Palka. Who is Sam Palka? An old lecher who has made a fortune and doesn’t know what to do with it. David Vishkover is a man like my father, peace be with him. Well—and what would happen to Channah Basha if she should hear the truth? Instead of becoming Sam Palka’s wife, she would become David Vishkover’s widow.’
I love this story. This hilarious portrait of everyday Main Street characters rings as true today as it did when it was first published back then. The basics are the same and how little things change.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Michael Dyber
Gemstone Carvings by Michael Dyber
www.dyber.net
Michael's unique lapidary techniques are one-of-a-kind work of art. They are stunningly beautiful and a marvel to watch.
www.dyber.net
Michael's unique lapidary techniques are one-of-a-kind work of art. They are stunningly beautiful and a marvel to watch.
Fair Trade
A Fair Wind for Fair Trade
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/global_business.shtml
Useful links:
www.maxhavelaar.ch
www.fairtrade.org.uk
www.wto.org
www.tropicalwholefoods.co.uk
www.nasfam.org
www.cafedirect.co.uk
www.divinechocolate.com
Great program. I enjoyed it. Thank you Peter.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/global_business.shtml
Useful links:
www.maxhavelaar.ch
www.fairtrade.org.uk
www.wto.org
www.tropicalwholefoods.co.uk
www.nasfam.org
www.cafedirect.co.uk
www.divinechocolate.com
Great program. I enjoyed it. Thank you Peter.
Lensless Microscope
The $10 Microscope
http://www.forbes.com/global/2009/0316/020_microscope.html
Useful link:
http://www.biophot.caltech.edu/people/yang.html
Can this stunningly simple design work in gemological applications?
http://www.forbes.com/global/2009/0316/020_microscope.html
Useful link:
http://www.biophot.caltech.edu/people/yang.html
Can this stunningly simple design work in gemological applications?
Disznókó
The wines at Disznókó (largest single-estate Tokaj producer), Hungary
www.disznoko.hu
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokaji
A must visit.
www.disznoko.hu
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokaji
A must visit.
Objectified
SXSW: Objectified Teaches Us 'You Are What You Own'
http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2009/03/sxsw-objectif-1.html
Useful links:
www.objectifiedfilm.com
www.helveticafilm.com
Great review. I enjoyed it.
http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2009/03/sxsw-objectif-1.html
Useful links:
www.objectifiedfilm.com
www.helveticafilm.com
Great review. I enjoyed it.
The Pearl Carpet Of Baroda
Pearl Carpet worth US$20m
http://www.thenational.ae/article/20090316/FOREIGN/796075951/1135
http://sothebys.com/app/paddleReg/paddlereg.do?dispatch=eventDetails&event_id=29507
Useful link:
www.sothebys.com
I think Qatar is the ideal place for the sale since the Basra pearls came from the waters of the Arabian Gulf. I am sure there will be intense bidding at the auction for the pearl carpet.
http://www.thenational.ae/article/20090316/FOREIGN/796075951/1135
http://sothebys.com/app/paddleReg/paddlereg.do?dispatch=eventDetails&event_id=29507
Useful link:
www.sothebys.com
I think Qatar is the ideal place for the sale since the Basra pearls came from the waters of the Arabian Gulf. I am sure there will be intense bidding at the auction for the pearl carpet.
Sam Palka And David Vishkover
Isaac Bashevis Singer, born in Poland in 1904, emigrated to New York in 1935, when he began writing in Yiddish for the Jewish Daily Forward. He is the author of many novels and stories and winner of the 1978 Nobel Prize for literature. Translated by the author and Dorothea Straus.
5
‘Would you believe it? In all this time Channah Basha never visited Manhattan. The subway terrified her with its din and noise. There was a Yiddish theater on Hopkinson Avenue, and once in a while I took her there. Sometimes they showed a Yiddish movie. There were moments when I thought I ought to put an end to this false game I was playing. Why shouldn’t she enjoy my riches? In the summer I wanted to rent a cottage in the Catskill for her. I offered her a trip with me to California. But she wouldn’t hear of it. Air conditioning did not exist then, and I wanted to buy her a fan. She refused it. She had a deathly fear of machines. She wouldn’t allow me to install a telephone. The one thing she accepted was a radio; it took her a long time to learn how to turn on the Yiddish stations. This is Channah Basha—so will she be until her last day.
‘My dear friend, I promised to make it short and I will keep my word. Bessie died. She had a quarrel with her gigolo—the pimp—and she went alone to Hong Kong. What she was looking for there I will never know. One day she collapsed in a restaurant and died. It was 1937. In all the years I had been coming to Channah Basha, we promised ourselves that if something happened to Bessie we would get married. But somehow I postponed telling her. There could be no thought of living with Channah Basha in the ruins of Blake Avenue. It was just as impossible to take her to my ten-room apartment on Park Avenue. My neighbors were all snooty rich. I had a Negro maid and an Irish housekeeper. I went to parties and I gave parties. No one spoke a word of Yiddish in my crowd. How could I bring Channah Basha into this Gentile-like world? With whom would she be able to talk? Besides, to find out that I had been lying to her all these years might be a shock that would tear our love apart like a spider web. I began to plan to go with her to Palestine, maybe to settle somewhere in Jerusalem or at Rachel’s grave, but Hitler was already baring his teeth. At a time like that it was good to be in America, not wandering around in faraway countries.
‘I put things off from day to day, from month to month. Why deny it—I wasn’t completely faithful to her during all those years. As long as I didn’t have true love I spat on frivolous women, but now that I had a true love it suited me to play around with others too. When women know that a man is alone they offer themselves by the dozen. I became a real Don Juan. I frequented nightclubs and restaurants where you meet the big shots. My name was even mentioned in the gossip columns. But these phony loves were enjoyable only because in Brownsville on Blake Avenue a real love waited. Who said it? One ounce of truth has more weight than ten tons of lies. I figured one way, then another, and meanwhile the war broke out. There was no place for us to flee to any more—unless, perhaps, Mexico or South America. But what would we two do there?
‘My dear man, nothing has changed up today, except that I have become an old man and Channah Basha is in her fifties. But you should see her; her hair is still gold and her face is that of young girl. It is said that this comes from pure conscience. Now that there was a war and she heard how Jews were tortured in Europe, she began to cry; she went on crying for years. She fasted and recited prayers, like God-fearing matrons in my village. Some organization advertised that they mailed packages to Russia, and every cent that I gave her Channah Basha sent there. She was so upset that she forgot I was a poor insurance agent and she took large sums of money from me I was supposed to have been saving for my old age. If she hadn’t been Channah Basha she would have recognized that something was wrong. But suspicion was not in her nature. She hardly knew the value of money—especially when it was in checks. I knew that the shrewd people in charge of those packages swindled her right and left, but I also knew that if even one dollar out of hundred served its purpose the deed was good. Besides, if I had told Channah Basha that people with beards and sidelocks stole money from refugees, she could have suffered a heart attack. Finally, I gave her so much that I had to tell her I was connected with a relief organization and they provided me with funds. She questioned nothing. Later, when Palestine became a Jewish state and the troubles with the Arab began, she again tried to help. Believe it or not, I am still getting money from those non-existent committees.’
(continued)
I love this story. This hilarious portrait of everyday Main Street characters rings as true today as it did when it was first published back then. The basics are the same and how little things change.
5
‘Would you believe it? In all this time Channah Basha never visited Manhattan. The subway terrified her with its din and noise. There was a Yiddish theater on Hopkinson Avenue, and once in a while I took her there. Sometimes they showed a Yiddish movie. There were moments when I thought I ought to put an end to this false game I was playing. Why shouldn’t she enjoy my riches? In the summer I wanted to rent a cottage in the Catskill for her. I offered her a trip with me to California. But she wouldn’t hear of it. Air conditioning did not exist then, and I wanted to buy her a fan. She refused it. She had a deathly fear of machines. She wouldn’t allow me to install a telephone. The one thing she accepted was a radio; it took her a long time to learn how to turn on the Yiddish stations. This is Channah Basha—so will she be until her last day.
‘My dear friend, I promised to make it short and I will keep my word. Bessie died. She had a quarrel with her gigolo—the pimp—and she went alone to Hong Kong. What she was looking for there I will never know. One day she collapsed in a restaurant and died. It was 1937. In all the years I had been coming to Channah Basha, we promised ourselves that if something happened to Bessie we would get married. But somehow I postponed telling her. There could be no thought of living with Channah Basha in the ruins of Blake Avenue. It was just as impossible to take her to my ten-room apartment on Park Avenue. My neighbors were all snooty rich. I had a Negro maid and an Irish housekeeper. I went to parties and I gave parties. No one spoke a word of Yiddish in my crowd. How could I bring Channah Basha into this Gentile-like world? With whom would she be able to talk? Besides, to find out that I had been lying to her all these years might be a shock that would tear our love apart like a spider web. I began to plan to go with her to Palestine, maybe to settle somewhere in Jerusalem or at Rachel’s grave, but Hitler was already baring his teeth. At a time like that it was good to be in America, not wandering around in faraway countries.
‘I put things off from day to day, from month to month. Why deny it—I wasn’t completely faithful to her during all those years. As long as I didn’t have true love I spat on frivolous women, but now that I had a true love it suited me to play around with others too. When women know that a man is alone they offer themselves by the dozen. I became a real Don Juan. I frequented nightclubs and restaurants where you meet the big shots. My name was even mentioned in the gossip columns. But these phony loves were enjoyable only because in Brownsville on Blake Avenue a real love waited. Who said it? One ounce of truth has more weight than ten tons of lies. I figured one way, then another, and meanwhile the war broke out. There was no place for us to flee to any more—unless, perhaps, Mexico or South America. But what would we two do there?
‘My dear man, nothing has changed up today, except that I have become an old man and Channah Basha is in her fifties. But you should see her; her hair is still gold and her face is that of young girl. It is said that this comes from pure conscience. Now that there was a war and she heard how Jews were tortured in Europe, she began to cry; she went on crying for years. She fasted and recited prayers, like God-fearing matrons in my village. Some organization advertised that they mailed packages to Russia, and every cent that I gave her Channah Basha sent there. She was so upset that she forgot I was a poor insurance agent and she took large sums of money from me I was supposed to have been saving for my old age. If she hadn’t been Channah Basha she would have recognized that something was wrong. But suspicion was not in her nature. She hardly knew the value of money—especially when it was in checks. I knew that the shrewd people in charge of those packages swindled her right and left, but I also knew that if even one dollar out of hundred served its purpose the deed was good. Besides, if I had told Channah Basha that people with beards and sidelocks stole money from refugees, she could have suffered a heart attack. Finally, I gave her so much that I had to tell her I was connected with a relief organization and they provided me with funds. She questioned nothing. Later, when Palestine became a Jewish state and the troubles with the Arab began, she again tried to help. Believe it or not, I am still getting money from those non-existent committees.’
(continued)
I love this story. This hilarious portrait of everyday Main Street characters rings as true today as it did when it was first published back then. The basics are the same and how little things change.
Thomas Friedman Viewpoint
The Next Really Cool Thing
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/15/opinion/15friedman.html?_r=1&em
Useful links:
https://lasers.llnl.gov
www.llnl.gov
Great essay. I hope they can pull this off. It's clean renewal energy.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/15/opinion/15friedman.html?_r=1&em
Useful links:
https://lasers.llnl.gov
www.llnl.gov
Great essay. I hope they can pull this off. It's clean renewal energy.
Monday, March 16, 2009
Short-Course Volumes
Current research on gemstone formation has been published via a series of short-course volumes by the Mineralogical Association of Canada. It is highly recommended.
Useful link:
www.mineralogicalassociation.ca/index.php?p=25
Useful link:
www.mineralogicalassociation.ca/index.php?p=25
Artists Rooms
ARTIST ROOMS
www.nationalgalleries.org/artistrooms
Anthony d'Offay's greatest act of cultural philanthropy, in living memory, really.
www.nationalgalleries.org/artistrooms
Anthony d'Offay's greatest act of cultural philanthropy, in living memory, really.
Indebted Diamond Sector
Indebted diamond sector set for shakeout as demand collapses
http://www.mineweb.com/mineweb/view/mineweb/en/page37?oid=79840&sn=Detail
Some players may not be around. Some big players may not be as strong. The market will be smaller and debt will have to fall.
- Victor van der Kwast
Useful links:
www.abnamro.com
www.diamonds.net
www.rosyblue.com
www.bvgd.be
www.awdc.be
Sign of the times, really. Everyone is cautious about diamond business today. No one knows what will happen.
http://www.mineweb.com/mineweb/view/mineweb/en/page37?oid=79840&sn=Detail
Some players may not be around. Some big players may not be as strong. The market will be smaller and debt will have to fall.
- Victor van der Kwast
Useful links:
www.abnamro.com
www.diamonds.net
www.rosyblue.com
www.bvgd.be
www.awdc.be
Sign of the times, really. Everyone is cautious about diamond business today. No one knows what will happen.
Opera's Greatest Moments
TIME Covers Opera
http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1884118_1854652,00.html
Useful link:
www.metoperafamily.org/metopera
Brilliantly said!
http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1884118_1854652,00.html
Useful link:
www.metoperafamily.org/metopera
Brilliantly said!
Alice Rawsthorn Viewpoint
Tripping back to the world of psychedelia
http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/03/13/arts/design16.php
Useful link:
www.alicerawsthorn.com
www.denverartmuseum.org
Great review. I loved it.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/03/13/arts/design16.php
Useful link:
www.alicerawsthorn.com
www.denverartmuseum.org
Great review. I loved it.
Art Market Update
Spring sprung
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13308450
If there is a crisis, it must be somewhere else.
- Conrad Bernheimer
Useful links:
www.suebond.co.uk
www.tefaf.com
www.colnaghi.co.uk
The European Fine Art Fair in the old Dutch city of Maastricht is the collectors universe. The lucky ones will find rare and beautiful art works and you will find yourself returning again.
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13308450
If there is a crisis, it must be somewhere else.
- Conrad Bernheimer
Useful links:
www.suebond.co.uk
www.tefaf.com
www.colnaghi.co.uk
The European Fine Art Fair in the old Dutch city of Maastricht is the collectors universe. The lucky ones will find rare and beautiful art works and you will find yourself returning again.
Superman Comic
First Superman fetches $317,200
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7943376.stm
Useful links:
www.comicconnect.com
www.supermanhomepage.com
Great news.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7943376.stm
Useful links:
www.comicconnect.com
www.supermanhomepage.com
Great news.
Sam Palka And David Vishkover
Isaac Bashevis Singer, born in Poland in 1904, emigrated to New York in 1935, when he began writing in Yiddish for the Jewish Daily Forward. He is the author of many novels and stories and winner of the 1978 Nobel Prize for literature. Translated by the author and Dorothea Straus.
4
‘Why go on? There grew up a great love between us. I saw to it that the house remained untouched. I visited her each week, and some weeks I took the Canarsie line to Brownsville two or three times. Whenever I went there, I wore a shabby suit and an old hat. I brought her presents of the kind that a sewing-machine salesman might bring: a pound of farmer cheese, a basket of fruit, a box of tea. The neighbors knew me and they wanted to buy sewing machines on the installment plan. I soon realized that if I sold them such bargains all of Brownsville would run after me, and I told Channah Basha that I had changed to the insurance business. I have forgotten the main thing: I called myself by another name—David Vishkover. It wasn’t invented; I had a cousin of that name.
‘For some time I managed to avoid her father, the beadle. As for Channah Basha, she fell in love with me with such passion that no words can describe it. One day I was a stranger and four weeks later her whole life hung on me. She knitted sweaters for me and cooked for me every dish I like. Whenever I tried to give her a few dollars she gave the money back and I had to beg her to accept it. I was a virtual millionaire, but on Blake Avenue I became a poor insurance agent, starving schlemiel whose wife bled him of his last penny. I know what you want to ask; yes, Channah Basha and I became like husband and wife. She was a pure virgin. How a girl like that could be talked into an affair is a story in itself. I know a little Jewish law, I persuaded her that according to the Torah a man is permitted to have two wives. As far as she was concerned, since she was unmarried she was not committing adultery. If I had told her to stand on her head, she could have done that too.
‘As long as Channah Basha’s father did not learn what was going on, everything went smoothly. We lived like two pigeons. But how long can such an affair remain a secret? When he found out that a married man was visiting his daughter and she had accepted him like a bridegroom, all hell broke loose. I assured him that the moment my vixen of a wife divorced me I would stand under the wedding canopy with his daughter.
‘Just as Channah Basha was beautiful, her father was ugly, sick, a broken shard. He warned me that I would be excommunicated. As time went on he grew more violent; he even hinted that he might have me thrown into prison. I was frightened, all right. One shouldn’t say it, but luck was on my side. He became mortally sick. He had bad kidneys and God knows what else. I sent him to doctors, took him to the hospital, paid for nurses, and I pretended that he was getting all this care for nothing. He lingered a few months and then he died. I erected a tombstone for him that cost fifteen hundred dollars and I made his daughter believe that it came form the landsleit of Wysoka. One lie leads to another. How is it written in the Talmud?
‘One sin drags another after it,’ I said.
‘Right.
‘After her father’s death, Channah Basha became even more childish than before. She mourned him as I never saw a daughter mourn her father. She hired a man to recite the Kaddish for him. She lighted candles in the synagogue. Every second week she visited his grave. I told her that my business was going well and I tried to give her more money. But no matter how little it was, she insisted is was too much. All she needed, she said, was a loaf of bread, a few potatoes, and once in a while a pound of stripe. Years passed and she still wore her same shabby dresses from the old country. I wanted to giver her an apartment on Ocean Avenue and furnish it. She refused to move. She kept on dusting and polishing her old junk. She read the Yiddish papers, and once she found my picture there. I had become the president of an old-age home and it was written up. She said, ‘See here, that Sam Palka looks just like you. Is he a relative or something?’ I said, ‘I wish he was a relative. In my family were all paupers.’ If I had told her that I was Sam Palka, our love would have been finished. She needed a poor man to look after, not a rich one to pamper her. Every time I left her to go home she offered me a bag of food so that I wouldn’t starve on my wife’s rations. Funny, isn’t it?
‘The years passed and I scarcely knew where they went. One day I had dark hair and it seemed that I turned gray. Channah Basha too was no longer a spring chicken. But her thoughts stayed those of a child. The house on Blake Avenue became so ramshackle I worried that the walls might cave in. I had to bribe the inspectors not to condemn it. The storybooks that Channah Basha brought from Wysoka had finally fallen apart, and she now read the books of the Yiddish writers in America. There was no lack of that merchandise in my house! Every time I went to Brownsville I brought her a stack, and she admired them all no matter how bad they were. She loved everyone except my wife. On her she poured sulphur and fire. She never tired of hearing about the troubles Bessie made for me, and I had plenty to tell. She had gotten herself a gigolo, a faker, and she traveled all over Europe with him. My children gave me no joy either. My son didn’t even graduate from high school. I have three daughters and none of them married happily. Their mother planted hatred of me in them. I was good for only one thing—to write checks. Still I had a great happiness: Channah Basha. She was always the same. In all those years she learned only a few words of English. Most of the Jewish tenants had moved out of the house and Puerto Ricans had moved in. Only two old women—widows—stayed, and Channah Basha watched over them. One had cataracts and later became blind. The other one had dropsy. Channah Basha took care of them like the best nurse.
(continued)
I love this story. This hilarious portrait of everyday Main Street characters rings as true today as it did when it was first published back then. The basics are the same and how little things change.
4
‘Why go on? There grew up a great love between us. I saw to it that the house remained untouched. I visited her each week, and some weeks I took the Canarsie line to Brownsville two or three times. Whenever I went there, I wore a shabby suit and an old hat. I brought her presents of the kind that a sewing-machine salesman might bring: a pound of farmer cheese, a basket of fruit, a box of tea. The neighbors knew me and they wanted to buy sewing machines on the installment plan. I soon realized that if I sold them such bargains all of Brownsville would run after me, and I told Channah Basha that I had changed to the insurance business. I have forgotten the main thing: I called myself by another name—David Vishkover. It wasn’t invented; I had a cousin of that name.
‘For some time I managed to avoid her father, the beadle. As for Channah Basha, she fell in love with me with such passion that no words can describe it. One day I was a stranger and four weeks later her whole life hung on me. She knitted sweaters for me and cooked for me every dish I like. Whenever I tried to give her a few dollars she gave the money back and I had to beg her to accept it. I was a virtual millionaire, but on Blake Avenue I became a poor insurance agent, starving schlemiel whose wife bled him of his last penny. I know what you want to ask; yes, Channah Basha and I became like husband and wife. She was a pure virgin. How a girl like that could be talked into an affair is a story in itself. I know a little Jewish law, I persuaded her that according to the Torah a man is permitted to have two wives. As far as she was concerned, since she was unmarried she was not committing adultery. If I had told her to stand on her head, she could have done that too.
‘As long as Channah Basha’s father did not learn what was going on, everything went smoothly. We lived like two pigeons. But how long can such an affair remain a secret? When he found out that a married man was visiting his daughter and she had accepted him like a bridegroom, all hell broke loose. I assured him that the moment my vixen of a wife divorced me I would stand under the wedding canopy with his daughter.
‘Just as Channah Basha was beautiful, her father was ugly, sick, a broken shard. He warned me that I would be excommunicated. As time went on he grew more violent; he even hinted that he might have me thrown into prison. I was frightened, all right. One shouldn’t say it, but luck was on my side. He became mortally sick. He had bad kidneys and God knows what else. I sent him to doctors, took him to the hospital, paid for nurses, and I pretended that he was getting all this care for nothing. He lingered a few months and then he died. I erected a tombstone for him that cost fifteen hundred dollars and I made his daughter believe that it came form the landsleit of Wysoka. One lie leads to another. How is it written in the Talmud?
‘One sin drags another after it,’ I said.
‘Right.
‘After her father’s death, Channah Basha became even more childish than before. She mourned him as I never saw a daughter mourn her father. She hired a man to recite the Kaddish for him. She lighted candles in the synagogue. Every second week she visited his grave. I told her that my business was going well and I tried to give her more money. But no matter how little it was, she insisted is was too much. All she needed, she said, was a loaf of bread, a few potatoes, and once in a while a pound of stripe. Years passed and she still wore her same shabby dresses from the old country. I wanted to giver her an apartment on Ocean Avenue and furnish it. She refused to move. She kept on dusting and polishing her old junk. She read the Yiddish papers, and once she found my picture there. I had become the president of an old-age home and it was written up. She said, ‘See here, that Sam Palka looks just like you. Is he a relative or something?’ I said, ‘I wish he was a relative. In my family were all paupers.’ If I had told her that I was Sam Palka, our love would have been finished. She needed a poor man to look after, not a rich one to pamper her. Every time I left her to go home she offered me a bag of food so that I wouldn’t starve on my wife’s rations. Funny, isn’t it?
‘The years passed and I scarcely knew where they went. One day I had dark hair and it seemed that I turned gray. Channah Basha too was no longer a spring chicken. But her thoughts stayed those of a child. The house on Blake Avenue became so ramshackle I worried that the walls might cave in. I had to bribe the inspectors not to condemn it. The storybooks that Channah Basha brought from Wysoka had finally fallen apart, and she now read the books of the Yiddish writers in America. There was no lack of that merchandise in my house! Every time I went to Brownsville I brought her a stack, and she admired them all no matter how bad they were. She loved everyone except my wife. On her she poured sulphur and fire. She never tired of hearing about the troubles Bessie made for me, and I had plenty to tell. She had gotten herself a gigolo, a faker, and she traveled all over Europe with him. My children gave me no joy either. My son didn’t even graduate from high school. I have three daughters and none of them married happily. Their mother planted hatred of me in them. I was good for only one thing—to write checks. Still I had a great happiness: Channah Basha. She was always the same. In all those years she learned only a few words of English. Most of the Jewish tenants had moved out of the house and Puerto Ricans had moved in. Only two old women—widows—stayed, and Channah Basha watched over them. One had cataracts and later became blind. The other one had dropsy. Channah Basha took care of them like the best nurse.
(continued)
I love this story. This hilarious portrait of everyday Main Street characters rings as true today as it did when it was first published back then. The basics are the same and how little things change.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Cross-Cultural Solutions
Love on the Fly: Volunteer Vacations
http://www.time.com/time/travel/article/0,31542,1885136,00.html
Useful links:
www.crossculturalsolutions.org
www.earthwatch.org
www.freethechildren.com
Great essay. The benefits = priceless immersive cultural experiences. Give it a try.
http://www.time.com/time/travel/article/0,31542,1885136,00.html
Useful links:
www.crossculturalsolutions.org
www.earthwatch.org
www.freethechildren.com
Great essay. The benefits = priceless immersive cultural experiences. Give it a try.
The Age Of Stupid
The Age of Stupid = Environmental docudrama (about climate change set in the future)
Useful links:
www.ageofstupid.net
www.spannerfilms.net
Useful links:
www.ageofstupid.net
www.spannerfilms.net
Tom Binns
Sandra’s Sources Tom Binns Megastore
http://themoment.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/11/sandras-sources-tom-binns-megastore
Useful link:
www.tombinnsdesign.com
The Anti-Luxxx items were brilliant.
http://themoment.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/11/sandras-sources-tom-binns-megastore
Useful link:
www.tombinnsdesign.com
The Anti-Luxxx items were brilliant.
Coating That Self-Heal
Coatings that 'self-heal' in sun
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7939776.stm
Useful links:
www.usm.edu/polymer
www.sciencemag.org
I wonder if this technolgy could be applied in gemstone treatments/enhancements.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7939776.stm
Useful links:
www.usm.edu/polymer
www.sciencemag.org
I wonder if this technolgy could be applied in gemstone treatments/enhancements.
Sam Palka And David Vishkover
Isaac Bashevis Singer, born in Poland in 1904, emigrated to New York in 1935, when he began writing in Yiddish for the Jewish Daily Forward. He is the author of many novels and stories and winner of the 1978 Nobel Prize for literature. Translated by the author and Dorothea Straus.
3
‘When I was about forty-two or forty-three I was really rich. Once the money starts to flow, you can’t stop it. I bought houses and lots and made huge profits. I bought stocks and they rose overnight. Taxes were nothing in those days. I owned a limousine and wrote checks for all kinds of charities. Now women swarmed around me like bees around honey. I got more love in a week than I could make use of in a year. But I am not a man who fools himself. I knew what they wanted was my money, not me. As they kissed me and tried to make me believe I was the great lover, they talked about what they would get out of it: trips to Florida, to Europe; mink coats; diamonds. It was all bluff. You lie in bed with them and they don’t let you forget that what you really are is a sugar daddy. I wished I could meet a woman who did not know about my money or an heiress so rich that in comparison I would seem poor. But where and when? I began to think that true love was not for me. How do they say in Poland? Sausage is not for dogs.
‘Suddenly a miracle happened. I acquired an old house on Blake Avenue in Brownsville. Today Brownsville is full of Negroes and Puerto Ricans; then it was the land of Israel. You couldn’t find a Gentile to save your life. I wanted to put up a new building, but first I had to get rid of the tenants. Often these things went easily, but this time some them balked. I didn’t believe in going to court; I preferred to settle with them myself. I had a free Sunday and decided to go and see what could be done. My car happened to be in the garage, so I took the subway. After all, I wasn’t born a Rockefeller.
‘At the house I knocked on a door, but in Brownsville they didn’t know the meaning of that. I pushed the latch, the door opened, and I saw a room that looked exactly like one in the old country. If I hadn’t known that I was in Brownsville, I would have thought that I was in a Konskowola: whitewashed walls, a board floor, a broken-down sofa with the stuffing sticking out. Even the smells were from Konskowola—fried onions, chicory, moldy bread. On the sofa sat a girl as beautiful as Queen Esther. One difference. Esther was supposed to be greenish and this girl was white, with blue eyes and golden hair—a beauty. She was dressed like a greenhorn who had just arrived: a long skirt and shoes with buttons. And what was she doing? Reading a story book: Sheindele with Blue Lips. I had read it years before on the other side. I thought I was dreaming and I pinched myself, but it was no dream.
‘I wanted to tell her that I was the landlord and had come to make move out. But some power stopped me. I began to play a role as if I were an actor in the theater. She asked me who I was and I said I was a salesman of sewing machines. I could get one for her cheap. She said, ‘What do I need a sewing machine for? When I want to sew something, I use my own ten fingers.’ She spoke a familiar Yiddish.
‘I could sit with you until tomorrow and not tell half of it, but I will make it short. She had been in this country only two years. Her father had been a Talmud teacher in Poland. He was brought to this land of gold by an uncle. Three days after the father and daughter left Ellis Island, the uncle died. Her father became a beadle for some little rabbi here. I asked her how old she was and she said twenty-six. ‘How does it happen,’ I asked her, ‘that such a beautiful girl is unmarried?’ She answered, ‘They offered me many matches but I refused to marry through a matchmaker. I have to be in love.’ What she said was not silly; she was like a child and her talk was also like that of a little girl. She was not retarted—just naïve. She had lived for twenty-four years in a tiny village in the hinterland—Wysoka. Her mother died when she was still young. Each word she uttered was the pure truth. She could as much lie as I could be the wife of a rabbi. I asked her name and she said, ‘Channah Basha.’ Why drag it out? I fell in love with her—head over heels. I couldn’t tear myself from her. I was afraid she would make me go, but she asked, ‘Aren’t you hungry? ‘Yes, I am hungry,’ I said and I thought, For you! She said, ‘I cooked burned-flour grits and I have full pot of it.’ I hadn’t heard the words ‘burned-flour grits’ for goodness knows how long and, believe me, no aria sung by an opera singer could have sounded sweeter.
‘Soon we were seated at a broken-down table, eating the burned-flour grits like an old couple. I told her that I too read storybooks. I could see that she had a whole pile of them, all brought over from the old country: The Story of the Three Brothers, The Tale of Two Butchers, The Adventures of the Pious Reb Zadock and the Twelve Robbers. She asked me, ‘Do you earn living by selling sewing machines?’ I said, ‘I manage to scratch together a few dollars.’ She asked, ‘Do you have a wife and children?’ I told her about my wife and poured out my bitter heart to her. Channah Basha listened and she grew pale. ‘Why do you hold on to such a shrew?’ I said, ‘Here in America when you divorce a wife you have to pay alimony. If not you go to jail. The alimony amounts to more than a man earns. This is the justice in the land of Columbus.’ She said, ‘God waits long but He punishes severely. She will soon come to a bad end.’ She cursed my wife. She said, ‘How do you live if she takes away your last bite?’ I said, ‘I still have enough for a piece of bread.’ She said, ‘Come to me. I often cook more than I need for my father and myself. I am always alone because my father comes home late, and with you it will be cozy.’ It was the first time that someone showed compassion for me and wanted to give instead of take. We ate the grits with fresh bread from the bakery and we washed it down with watery tea while we babbled about the Three Brothers of whom the first took upon himself the good deed of ransoming innocent prisoners, the second of helping poor orphans to marry, and third of honoring the Sabbath. Then I told here a story about a young man who found a golden hair and traveled all over the world in search of the woman from whose head it had fallen. He found her on the island of Madagascar and she was the queen herself. Channah Basha listened eagerly to every word.
(continued)
I love this story. This hilarious portrait of everyday Main Street characters rings as true today as it did when it was first published back then. The basics are the same and how little things change.
3
‘When I was about forty-two or forty-three I was really rich. Once the money starts to flow, you can’t stop it. I bought houses and lots and made huge profits. I bought stocks and they rose overnight. Taxes were nothing in those days. I owned a limousine and wrote checks for all kinds of charities. Now women swarmed around me like bees around honey. I got more love in a week than I could make use of in a year. But I am not a man who fools himself. I knew what they wanted was my money, not me. As they kissed me and tried to make me believe I was the great lover, they talked about what they would get out of it: trips to Florida, to Europe; mink coats; diamonds. It was all bluff. You lie in bed with them and they don’t let you forget that what you really are is a sugar daddy. I wished I could meet a woman who did not know about my money or an heiress so rich that in comparison I would seem poor. But where and when? I began to think that true love was not for me. How do they say in Poland? Sausage is not for dogs.
‘Suddenly a miracle happened. I acquired an old house on Blake Avenue in Brownsville. Today Brownsville is full of Negroes and Puerto Ricans; then it was the land of Israel. You couldn’t find a Gentile to save your life. I wanted to put up a new building, but first I had to get rid of the tenants. Often these things went easily, but this time some them balked. I didn’t believe in going to court; I preferred to settle with them myself. I had a free Sunday and decided to go and see what could be done. My car happened to be in the garage, so I took the subway. After all, I wasn’t born a Rockefeller.
‘At the house I knocked on a door, but in Brownsville they didn’t know the meaning of that. I pushed the latch, the door opened, and I saw a room that looked exactly like one in the old country. If I hadn’t known that I was in Brownsville, I would have thought that I was in a Konskowola: whitewashed walls, a board floor, a broken-down sofa with the stuffing sticking out. Even the smells were from Konskowola—fried onions, chicory, moldy bread. On the sofa sat a girl as beautiful as Queen Esther. One difference. Esther was supposed to be greenish and this girl was white, with blue eyes and golden hair—a beauty. She was dressed like a greenhorn who had just arrived: a long skirt and shoes with buttons. And what was she doing? Reading a story book: Sheindele with Blue Lips. I had read it years before on the other side. I thought I was dreaming and I pinched myself, but it was no dream.
‘I wanted to tell her that I was the landlord and had come to make move out. But some power stopped me. I began to play a role as if I were an actor in the theater. She asked me who I was and I said I was a salesman of sewing machines. I could get one for her cheap. She said, ‘What do I need a sewing machine for? When I want to sew something, I use my own ten fingers.’ She spoke a familiar Yiddish.
‘I could sit with you until tomorrow and not tell half of it, but I will make it short. She had been in this country only two years. Her father had been a Talmud teacher in Poland. He was brought to this land of gold by an uncle. Three days after the father and daughter left Ellis Island, the uncle died. Her father became a beadle for some little rabbi here. I asked her how old she was and she said twenty-six. ‘How does it happen,’ I asked her, ‘that such a beautiful girl is unmarried?’ She answered, ‘They offered me many matches but I refused to marry through a matchmaker. I have to be in love.’ What she said was not silly; she was like a child and her talk was also like that of a little girl. She was not retarted—just naïve. She had lived for twenty-four years in a tiny village in the hinterland—Wysoka. Her mother died when she was still young. Each word she uttered was the pure truth. She could as much lie as I could be the wife of a rabbi. I asked her name and she said, ‘Channah Basha.’ Why drag it out? I fell in love with her—head over heels. I couldn’t tear myself from her. I was afraid she would make me go, but she asked, ‘Aren’t you hungry? ‘Yes, I am hungry,’ I said and I thought, For you! She said, ‘I cooked burned-flour grits and I have full pot of it.’ I hadn’t heard the words ‘burned-flour grits’ for goodness knows how long and, believe me, no aria sung by an opera singer could have sounded sweeter.
‘Soon we were seated at a broken-down table, eating the burned-flour grits like an old couple. I told her that I too read storybooks. I could see that she had a whole pile of them, all brought over from the old country: The Story of the Three Brothers, The Tale of Two Butchers, The Adventures of the Pious Reb Zadock and the Twelve Robbers. She asked me, ‘Do you earn living by selling sewing machines?’ I said, ‘I manage to scratch together a few dollars.’ She asked, ‘Do you have a wife and children?’ I told her about my wife and poured out my bitter heart to her. Channah Basha listened and she grew pale. ‘Why do you hold on to such a shrew?’ I said, ‘Here in America when you divorce a wife you have to pay alimony. If not you go to jail. The alimony amounts to more than a man earns. This is the justice in the land of Columbus.’ She said, ‘God waits long but He punishes severely. She will soon come to a bad end.’ She cursed my wife. She said, ‘How do you live if she takes away your last bite?’ I said, ‘I still have enough for a piece of bread.’ She said, ‘Come to me. I often cook more than I need for my father and myself. I am always alone because my father comes home late, and with you it will be cozy.’ It was the first time that someone showed compassion for me and wanted to give instead of take. We ate the grits with fresh bread from the bakery and we washed it down with watery tea while we babbled about the Three Brothers of whom the first took upon himself the good deed of ransoming innocent prisoners, the second of helping poor orphans to marry, and third of honoring the Sabbath. Then I told here a story about a young man who found a golden hair and traveled all over the world in search of the woman from whose head it had fallen. He found her on the island of Madagascar and she was the queen herself. Channah Basha listened eagerly to every word.
(continued)
I love this story. This hilarious portrait of everyday Main Street characters rings as true today as it did when it was first published back then. The basics are the same and how little things change.
Jon Stewart Vs Jim Cramer
Cramer Grilled on Jon Stewart
http://seekingalpha.com/article/125804-cramer-grilled-on-jon-stewart
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/15/usa-tv-jon-stewart-economy
Useful links:
www.thedailyshow.com
www.cnbc.com/id/15838459
It's a must-see. It took Jon Stewart to explain to investors how things really work on Wall Street. Jon was brilliant.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/125804-cramer-grilled-on-jon-stewart
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/15/usa-tv-jon-stewart-economy
Useful links:
www.thedailyshow.com
www.cnbc.com/id/15838459
It's a must-see. It took Jon Stewart to explain to investors how things really work on Wall Street. Jon was brilliant.
Saturday, March 14, 2009
European Fine Art Fair 2009
The European Fine Art Fair kicks off in a blaze of discoveries
http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/03/13/arts/melik14.php
Useful link:
www.tefaf.com
It's amazing the fair pulls in an attendance that grows every year, crisis or no crisis. Thank you Souren for the latest update.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/03/13/arts/melik14.php
Useful link:
www.tefaf.com
It's amazing the fair pulls in an attendance that grows every year, crisis or no crisis. Thank you Souren for the latest update.
Camila Batmanghelidjh
Charity founder portrait unveiled
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/arts_and_culture/7941839.stm
Useful links:
www.kidsco.org.uk
www.npg.org.uk
www.schwabfound.org
As a psychotherapist/social entrepreneur + founder/director of Kids Company, she has been an inspiration for children marginalised by society. Hats off to Camila!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/arts_and_culture/7941839.stm
Useful links:
www.kidsco.org.uk
www.npg.org.uk
www.schwabfound.org
As a psychotherapist/social entrepreneur + founder/director of Kids Company, she has been an inspiration for children marginalised by society. Hats off to Camila!
Plácido Domingo Forever
45 Roles, 628 Performances. Why Stop?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/13/arts/music/13domi.html?_r=1
Useful links:
www.metoperafamily.org
www.placidodomingo.com
I think Domingo is in good shape and should continue his performance forever. I am a huge fan.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/13/arts/music/13domi.html?_r=1
Useful links:
www.metoperafamily.org
www.placidodomingo.com
I think Domingo is in good shape and should continue his performance forever. I am a huge fan.
Engagement Ring Story
The Lure of the Engagement Ring
http://www.yourtango.com/print/3183
Useful links:
www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/14234.html
www.debeers.com
www.unusualweddingrings.com
Great essay. I loved it.
http://www.yourtango.com/print/3183
Useful links:
www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/14234.html
www.debeers.com
www.unusualweddingrings.com
Great essay. I loved it.
Pippa Small
A Fashionable Jeweler With a Conscience
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/fashion/08DIARY.html?_r=1
Useful link:
www.pippasmall.com
Inspiring story.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/fashion/08DIARY.html?_r=1
Useful link:
www.pippasmall.com
Inspiring story.
Diamond Windows
Diamonds: A fighter pilot's best friend?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29677221
Useful links:
www.wpafb.af.mil
www.apollodiamond.com
www.gemesis.com
It takes about 10 years for new materials or technology to make it into commercial or military devices. That's what I have been told before by the experts. What's intriguing to me is diamond's optical and thermal properties + its physical strength, and its wider application. It's really amazing.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29677221
Useful links:
www.wpafb.af.mil
www.apollodiamond.com
www.gemesis.com
It takes about 10 years for new materials or technology to make it into commercial or military devices. That's what I have been told before by the experts. What's intriguing to me is diamond's optical and thermal properties + its physical strength, and its wider application. It's really amazing.
The Crash
Federico Garcia Lorca, in his lecture on Poet in New York, described Wall Street in the aftermath of the Great Crash of 1929.
The Crash
The terrible, cold, cruel part is Wall Street. Rivers of gold flow there from all over the earth, and death comes with it. There as nowhere else you feel a total absence of the spirit: herds of men who cannot count past three, herds more who cannot get past six, scorn for pure science, and demoniacal respect for the present. And the terrible thing is that the crowd who fills the street believes that the world will always be the same, and that it is their duty to move the huge machine day and night forever. The perfect result of a Protestant morality that I, as a (thank God) typical Spaniard, found unnerving. I was lucky enough to see with my own eyes the recent crash, where they lost various billions of dollars, a rabble of dead money that slid off into the sea, and never as then, amid suicides, hysteria, and groups of fainters, have I felt the sensation of real death, death without hope, death that is nothing but rottenness, for the spectacle was terrifying but devoid of greatness. And I, who come from a country where, as the great poet Unamuno said, ‘at night the earth climbs to the sky,’ I felt something like a divine urge to bombard that whole shadowy defile where ambulances collected suicides whose hands were full of rings.
That is why I included this dance of death. The typical African mask, death which is truly dead, without angels or ‘resurrexit’; death as far removed from the spirit, as barbarous and primitive as the United States, which has never fought, and never will fight for heaven.
Spot on.
The Crash
The terrible, cold, cruel part is Wall Street. Rivers of gold flow there from all over the earth, and death comes with it. There as nowhere else you feel a total absence of the spirit: herds of men who cannot count past three, herds more who cannot get past six, scorn for pure science, and demoniacal respect for the present. And the terrible thing is that the crowd who fills the street believes that the world will always be the same, and that it is their duty to move the huge machine day and night forever. The perfect result of a Protestant morality that I, as a (thank God) typical Spaniard, found unnerving. I was lucky enough to see with my own eyes the recent crash, where they lost various billions of dollars, a rabble of dead money that slid off into the sea, and never as then, amid suicides, hysteria, and groups of fainters, have I felt the sensation of real death, death without hope, death that is nothing but rottenness, for the spectacle was terrifying but devoid of greatness. And I, who come from a country where, as the great poet Unamuno said, ‘at night the earth climbs to the sky,’ I felt something like a divine urge to bombard that whole shadowy defile where ambulances collected suicides whose hands were full of rings.
That is why I included this dance of death. The typical African mask, death which is truly dead, without angels or ‘resurrexit’; death as far removed from the spirit, as barbarous and primitive as the United States, which has never fought, and never will fight for heaven.
Spot on.
Sam Palka And David Vishkover
Isaac Bashevis Singer, born in Poland in 1904, emigrated to New York in 1935, when he began writing in Yiddish for the Jewish Daily Forward. He is the author of many novels and stories and winner of the 1978 Nobel Prize for literature. Translated by the author and Dorothea Straus.
2
‘Where should I begin? I was born in a pious home. My parents were old-fashioned Jews, but even when I was still a cheder boy I heard about love. Does one have to look far for it? It’s right in the Torah. Jacob loved Rachel, and when Laban, the cheat, substituted Leah in the dark night Jacob labored another seven years. Well, and what about King David and King Solomon with the Queen of Sheba and all that stuff? Book peddlers used to come to our village and they brought story books—two pennies to buy a book, one penny to borrow it. I was a poor boy, but whenever I could get hold of a penny I spent it on reading. When I came to America and I earned three dollars a week, I spent my last cent on books or on tickets for the Yiddish theater. In those times actors were still actors and not sticks of wood. When they appeared on stage, the boards burned under their feet. I saw all of them! Adler, Mme. Liptzin, Schildkraut, Kessler, Tomashevsky—every one of them. Well, and the playwrights of those times—Goldfaden, Jacob Gordin, Lateiner! Each word had to do with love, and you could have kissed each one. When you read my book you will see that I had no luck in my marriage. I fell for a rotten woman—a bitter piece, a bitch. How she ruined my days and how she set my children against me is all there. As long as I was young and poor I worked in a sweatshop, and then I took to peddling. I had no time for love. I lived in a dark alcove and I couldn’t afford to buy clothes. We worked then fourteen hours a day, and when it was busy even eighteen. When it became slack we had barely a crust to eat. If your stomach is empty you forget above love.
‘I built my first bungalow quite a number of years after I married, and I soon became so successful it was as though Elijah had blessed me. One day I had nothing and the next money poured in from all sides. But I still worked hard, perhaps even harder than ever. No matter how successful a man is, he can slip in no time from the top of the heap to the very bottom. You have to be on the watch every minute. As long as I had a job or carried a pack on my shoulders and peddled, at least I rested on the Sabbath. With prosperity, my Sabbaths too were gone. My wife got wind that I had spare dollar and began to tear pieces off me. We moved from the Lower East Side and took an apartment uptown. The children came one after the other and there were doctors, private schools, and the devil knows what else. My wife—Bessie was her name—bedecked herself with so much jewelry you could hardly see her. She came from petty and mean people, and when these get the smell of money they lose their heads. I was in my later thirties, and I still had not tasted real love. If I had ever loved my wife it was only from Monday to Tuesday. We quarreled constantly, and she threatened me with jail and judges. She kept reminding me that in America a lady is something so special you have to bow to her as though she were an idol. She carried on until I couldn’t look at her any more. When I heard her voice I felt like vomiting. She indulged in all sorts of trickery, but she still expected me to be a husband to her. Impossible! We no longer shared a bedroom. By this time I had an office, and secretly I got a little apartment in one of my buildings. I’m sorry to admit it, but if you hate a wife you’re bound to care less for the children. After Bessie, that fishwife, realized we would never be close again, she began to look for others. She did it so crudely men were afraid to start anything with her. She snatched at their sleeves like Potiphar’s wife. I know what you want to ask me—why didn’t I get a divorce. First of all, in those times to get a divorce you had to jump through hoops, knocking on the doors of the courts and so on. Today you fly to Reno and in six weeks you are as free as a bird. Secondly, she would have set a bunch of shysters on me and they would have fleeced me of my last penny. Besides, one gets a divorce when one is in love with someone else. If no one is waiting for you, why look for more headaches? I had partners in the business, and even though they had good wives they kept company with loose women. Today these women have become fancy call girls, but a whore is a whore. They all did it—the manufacturers, the jobbers, anyone who could pay. For them it was a game. But if these prostitutes were all you had, you realized your misfortune. It happened more than once that I just looked at one of these sluts and lost my appetite. I would give her a few dollars and run away like a yeshiva boy. I would go to a movie and for hours watch the gangsters shooting one another. So the years passed, and I thought that I would never learn what love was. Do you want to hear more?
‘Yes, of course.’
‘This alone would make a book. When you write it, you will know how to embellish it.’
‘Why embellish? As you tell it is good enough.’
‘Well, writers like to embellish.’
(continued)
I love this story. This hilarious portrait of everyday Main Street characters rings as true today as it did when it was first published back then. The basics are the same and how little things change.
2
‘Where should I begin? I was born in a pious home. My parents were old-fashioned Jews, but even when I was still a cheder boy I heard about love. Does one have to look far for it? It’s right in the Torah. Jacob loved Rachel, and when Laban, the cheat, substituted Leah in the dark night Jacob labored another seven years. Well, and what about King David and King Solomon with the Queen of Sheba and all that stuff? Book peddlers used to come to our village and they brought story books—two pennies to buy a book, one penny to borrow it. I was a poor boy, but whenever I could get hold of a penny I spent it on reading. When I came to America and I earned three dollars a week, I spent my last cent on books or on tickets for the Yiddish theater. In those times actors were still actors and not sticks of wood. When they appeared on stage, the boards burned under their feet. I saw all of them! Adler, Mme. Liptzin, Schildkraut, Kessler, Tomashevsky—every one of them. Well, and the playwrights of those times—Goldfaden, Jacob Gordin, Lateiner! Each word had to do with love, and you could have kissed each one. When you read my book you will see that I had no luck in my marriage. I fell for a rotten woman—a bitter piece, a bitch. How she ruined my days and how she set my children against me is all there. As long as I was young and poor I worked in a sweatshop, and then I took to peddling. I had no time for love. I lived in a dark alcove and I couldn’t afford to buy clothes. We worked then fourteen hours a day, and when it was busy even eighteen. When it became slack we had barely a crust to eat. If your stomach is empty you forget above love.
‘I built my first bungalow quite a number of years after I married, and I soon became so successful it was as though Elijah had blessed me. One day I had nothing and the next money poured in from all sides. But I still worked hard, perhaps even harder than ever. No matter how successful a man is, he can slip in no time from the top of the heap to the very bottom. You have to be on the watch every minute. As long as I had a job or carried a pack on my shoulders and peddled, at least I rested on the Sabbath. With prosperity, my Sabbaths too were gone. My wife got wind that I had spare dollar and began to tear pieces off me. We moved from the Lower East Side and took an apartment uptown. The children came one after the other and there were doctors, private schools, and the devil knows what else. My wife—Bessie was her name—bedecked herself with so much jewelry you could hardly see her. She came from petty and mean people, and when these get the smell of money they lose their heads. I was in my later thirties, and I still had not tasted real love. If I had ever loved my wife it was only from Monday to Tuesday. We quarreled constantly, and she threatened me with jail and judges. She kept reminding me that in America a lady is something so special you have to bow to her as though she were an idol. She carried on until I couldn’t look at her any more. When I heard her voice I felt like vomiting. She indulged in all sorts of trickery, but she still expected me to be a husband to her. Impossible! We no longer shared a bedroom. By this time I had an office, and secretly I got a little apartment in one of my buildings. I’m sorry to admit it, but if you hate a wife you’re bound to care less for the children. After Bessie, that fishwife, realized we would never be close again, she began to look for others. She did it so crudely men were afraid to start anything with her. She snatched at their sleeves like Potiphar’s wife. I know what you want to ask me—why didn’t I get a divorce. First of all, in those times to get a divorce you had to jump through hoops, knocking on the doors of the courts and so on. Today you fly to Reno and in six weeks you are as free as a bird. Secondly, she would have set a bunch of shysters on me and they would have fleeced me of my last penny. Besides, one gets a divorce when one is in love with someone else. If no one is waiting for you, why look for more headaches? I had partners in the business, and even though they had good wives they kept company with loose women. Today these women have become fancy call girls, but a whore is a whore. They all did it—the manufacturers, the jobbers, anyone who could pay. For them it was a game. But if these prostitutes were all you had, you realized your misfortune. It happened more than once that I just looked at one of these sluts and lost my appetite. I would give her a few dollars and run away like a yeshiva boy. I would go to a movie and for hours watch the gangsters shooting one another. So the years passed, and I thought that I would never learn what love was. Do you want to hear more?
‘Yes, of course.’
‘This alone would make a book. When you write it, you will know how to embellish it.’
‘Why embellish? As you tell it is good enough.’
‘Well, writers like to embellish.’
(continued)
I love this story. This hilarious portrait of everyday Main Street characters rings as true today as it did when it was first published back then. The basics are the same and how little things change.
Friday, March 13, 2009
Heroic Entrepreneurs
Global heroes
http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13216025
Useful links:
www.kauffman.org
www.tie.org
www.howardstevenson.com
Great essay. I think globalisation of entrepreneurship is raising the competitive stakes for everyone. It's good, really.
http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13216025
Useful links:
www.kauffman.org
www.tie.org
www.howardstevenson.com
Great essay. I think globalisation of entrepreneurship is raising the competitive stakes for everyone. It's good, really.
Surfing For Life
Surfing For Life
www.surfingforlife.com
Surfing for Life is such a positive and uplifting movie that it should be seen by all.
www.surfingforlife.com
Surfing for Life is such a positive and uplifting movie that it should be seen by all.
Arab Culture
Arab culture goes stateside
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7929643.stm
http://www.kennedy-center.org/programs/festivals/08-09/arabesque
Useful link:
www.kennedy-center.org
Extraordinary performances + fresh interpretations. A must visit.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7929643.stm
http://www.kennedy-center.org/programs/festivals/08-09/arabesque
Useful link:
www.kennedy-center.org
Extraordinary performances + fresh interpretations. A must visit.
Coral Lab
'Coral lab' offers acidity insight
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7939452.stm
Useful links:
www.globalcoral.org
www.biu.ac.il/faculty/finema
www.iui-eilat.ac.il
I think mass coral extinction is possible due to acidification + global warming + lack of action.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7939452.stm
Useful links:
www.globalcoral.org
www.biu.ac.il/faculty/finema
www.iui-eilat.ac.il
I think mass coral extinction is possible due to acidification + global warming + lack of action.
The World's Biggest Diamond Heist
The Untold Story of the World's Biggest Diamond Heist
http://www.wired.com/politics/law/magazine/17-04/ff_diamonds
Useful link:
www.joshuadavis.net
Intriguing story. These things happen.
http://www.wired.com/politics/law/magazine/17-04/ff_diamonds
Useful link:
www.joshuadavis.net
Intriguing story. These things happen.
Chaim Even Zohar Viewpoint
A Banker’s Doublespeak
http://www.idexonline.com/portal_FullEditorial.asp
Useful links:
www.diamondintelligence.com
www.mine2mistress.com
Spot on.
http://www.idexonline.com/portal_FullEditorial.asp
Useful links:
www.diamondintelligence.com
www.mine2mistress.com
Spot on.
Sam Palka And David Vishkover
Isaac Bashevis Singer, born in Poland in 1904, emigrated to New York in 1935, when he began writing in Yiddish for the Jewish Daily Forward. He is the author of many novels and stories and winner of the 1978 Nobel Prize for literature. Translated by the author and Dorothea Straus.
Sam Palka sat on the sofa—stocky, a tuft of white hair on each side of his bald head, his face red, with bushy brows and bloodshot eyes that changed from pale blue to green to yellow. A cigar stuck out between his lips. His belly protruded like that of a woman in late pregnancy. He wore a navy-blue jacket, green pants, brown shoes, a shirt with purple stripes, and a silk tie on which was painted the head of a lion. Sam Palka himself looked to me like a lion by which by some magic had turned into a rich man in New York, a Maecenas to Yiddish writers, a supporter of the Yiddish theater, president of an old-age home in Bronx, the treasurer of a society that supported orphans in Israel.
Talking to me, Sam Palka shouted as though I were deaf. He lifted a thick manuscript from the coffee table and yelled, ‘Over a thousand pages, huh! And this is not one-hundredth part of what I could have written. But fix it up the way it is.’
‘I will do what I can.
‘Money doesn’t matter. Even if I should live a thousand years, I have enough. I will pay you three thousand dollars for the editing, and when the book comes out and they write about it in the papers I will give you—what do they call it? – a bonus. But make it tasty. I can’t read the books writers bring me—three or four lines of a novel and you have to fight to stay awake. In my day a book grabbed you. You began to read a novel and couldn’t put it down, because you wanted to know what happened. Dieneson, Spector, Seifert! And there were thoughts that took you who knows where. They contained history, too. Samson and Delilah, Jepthah’s daughter, Bar Kochba. They hit the spot. Today you read half a book and you still don’t know what it’s about. These scribblers write of love, but they know as much of love as I know of what’s going on on the moon. How should they know? They sit all day long and half the night in the Café Royal and argue about how great they are. They have sour milk and ink in their veins, not blood. I haven’t forgotten Yiddish. The man I dictated this book to tried to correct me all the time; he didn’t like my Polish Yiddish. But he didn’t bother me. I would dictate an episode and he would ask, ‘How can that be. It’s not realistic.’ He came from Ishishok, some godforsaken village, and to him what he hadn’t experienced didn’t exist—a bookworm, an idiot.
‘Now, I want you to know that even though I dictated over one thousand pages I had to leave out the main thing. I could not describe it because the heroine is alive and she reads. She does one thing in her life—she reads. She has heard of all today’s writers. Wherever a new book can be found, she gets it and reads it from cover to cover. My life wouldn’t be worth living if I were to publish the truth and she should learn about it. What I am going to tell you can be written only after my death. But who is there to do it? You are still a young man, you know your way around, and when I kick the bucket I want you to add this story to the book. Without it the whole thing isn’t worth a damn. I will provide for your additional work in my will.
(continued)
I love this story. This hilarious portrait of everyday Main Street characters rings as true today as it did when it was first published back then. The basics are the same and how little things change.
Sam Palka sat on the sofa—stocky, a tuft of white hair on each side of his bald head, his face red, with bushy brows and bloodshot eyes that changed from pale blue to green to yellow. A cigar stuck out between his lips. His belly protruded like that of a woman in late pregnancy. He wore a navy-blue jacket, green pants, brown shoes, a shirt with purple stripes, and a silk tie on which was painted the head of a lion. Sam Palka himself looked to me like a lion by which by some magic had turned into a rich man in New York, a Maecenas to Yiddish writers, a supporter of the Yiddish theater, president of an old-age home in Bronx, the treasurer of a society that supported orphans in Israel.
Talking to me, Sam Palka shouted as though I were deaf. He lifted a thick manuscript from the coffee table and yelled, ‘Over a thousand pages, huh! And this is not one-hundredth part of what I could have written. But fix it up the way it is.’
‘I will do what I can.
‘Money doesn’t matter. Even if I should live a thousand years, I have enough. I will pay you three thousand dollars for the editing, and when the book comes out and they write about it in the papers I will give you—what do they call it? – a bonus. But make it tasty. I can’t read the books writers bring me—three or four lines of a novel and you have to fight to stay awake. In my day a book grabbed you. You began to read a novel and couldn’t put it down, because you wanted to know what happened. Dieneson, Spector, Seifert! And there were thoughts that took you who knows where. They contained history, too. Samson and Delilah, Jepthah’s daughter, Bar Kochba. They hit the spot. Today you read half a book and you still don’t know what it’s about. These scribblers write of love, but they know as much of love as I know of what’s going on on the moon. How should they know? They sit all day long and half the night in the Café Royal and argue about how great they are. They have sour milk and ink in their veins, not blood. I haven’t forgotten Yiddish. The man I dictated this book to tried to correct me all the time; he didn’t like my Polish Yiddish. But he didn’t bother me. I would dictate an episode and he would ask, ‘How can that be. It’s not realistic.’ He came from Ishishok, some godforsaken village, and to him what he hadn’t experienced didn’t exist—a bookworm, an idiot.
‘Now, I want you to know that even though I dictated over one thousand pages I had to leave out the main thing. I could not describe it because the heroine is alive and she reads. She does one thing in her life—she reads. She has heard of all today’s writers. Wherever a new book can be found, she gets it and reads it from cover to cover. My life wouldn’t be worth living if I were to publish the truth and she should learn about it. What I am going to tell you can be written only after my death. But who is there to do it? You are still a young man, you know your way around, and when I kick the bucket I want you to add this story to the book. Without it the whole thing isn’t worth a damn. I will provide for your additional work in my will.
(continued)
I love this story. This hilarious portrait of everyday Main Street characters rings as true today as it did when it was first published back then. The basics are the same and how little things change.
Wall Street, 1835
Philip Hone (1780-1851) was a New York businessman, Whig leader, member of social and literary societies, and Mayor of the City between 1820 and 1824. After he finished his term of office he kept a diary for the remainder of his life which is an invaluable record of social and political developments in the city in the period leading up to the Civil War.
Wall Street, 1835
October 14. The gambling in stocks in Wall Street has arrived at such a pitch, and the sudden reverses of fortune are so frequent, that it is a matter of everyday intelligence that some unlucky rascal has lost other people’s money to a large amount, and run away, or been caught and consigned to the hands of justice. It is one taken from the mass; there is some swearing among the losers, some regret on the part of the immediate friends of the defaulter, but the chasm on the face of society which his detection and removal occasions is filled up in a day or two. They go to work again to cheat each other, and the catastrophe of Monday is forgotten by Saturday night.
It is every bit as true today as it was back then + a reminder of the constancy of human behavior in the face of temptation.
Wall Street, 1835
October 14. The gambling in stocks in Wall Street has arrived at such a pitch, and the sudden reverses of fortune are so frequent, that it is a matter of everyday intelligence that some unlucky rascal has lost other people’s money to a large amount, and run away, or been caught and consigned to the hands of justice. It is one taken from the mass; there is some swearing among the losers, some regret on the part of the immediate friends of the defaulter, but the chasm on the face of society which his detection and removal occasions is filled up in a day or two. They go to work again to cheat each other, and the catastrophe of Monday is forgotten by Saturday night.
It is every bit as true today as it was back then + a reminder of the constancy of human behavior in the face of temptation.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Chinese Art Market Update
Chinese art waits out the market plunge
http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/03/11/asia/artists.php
Useful links:
www.longmarchspace.com
www.artprice.com
www.f2gallery.com
www.ullens-center.org
www.pacewildenstein.com
www.798space.com
www.acquavellagalleries.com
www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk
In the future, the market will recover. That's what dealers are saying about the state of the art market. I hope they are right.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/03/11/asia/artists.php
Useful links:
www.longmarchspace.com
www.artprice.com
www.f2gallery.com
www.ullens-center.org
www.pacewildenstein.com
www.798space.com
www.acquavellagalleries.com
www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk
In the future, the market will recover. That's what dealers are saying about the state of the art market. I hope they are right.
South India Jewelry Show 2009
The third edition of South India Jewellery Show will be held at the Lalit Grand Ashoka hotel in Bangalore, March 14 - 16, 2009.
Useful links:
www.sijs.in
www.gjf.in
www.gold.org
www.jewellersassociation.org.in
www.ficci.com
Useful links:
www.sijs.in
www.gjf.in
www.gold.org
www.jewellersassociation.org.in
www.ficci.com
Pearl Market Dubai
According to Statistics Department of Dubai World the value of the loose pearl trade in Dubai grew from AED 22 million in 2007 to over AED 95 million during 2008 representing a total year-on-year growth of 324%. That's a significant growth curve!
Useful links:
www.dubaiworld.ae
www.dpe.ae
www.dmcc.ae
Useful links:
www.dubaiworld.ae
www.dpe.ae
www.dmcc.ae
Top Tips From Africa's Entrepreneurs
Top tips from Africa's entrepreneurs
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7934763.stm
Interesting insights. It is important to say to yourself - I am as good as the other person. If that person can do it, then so can I.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7934763.stm
Interesting insights. It is important to say to yourself - I am as good as the other person. If that person can do it, then so can I.
Huge Pearl Farm
Saudis plan $200m pearl farm, fuel plant in WA
http://www.thewest.com.au/default.aspx?MenuID=77&ContentID=129133
Useful links:
www.williecreekpearls.com.au
www.fish.wa.gov.au
It’s a really significant project. Pearls + tourism.
http://www.thewest.com.au/default.aspx?MenuID=77&ContentID=129133
Useful links:
www.williecreekpearls.com.au
www.fish.wa.gov.au
It’s a really significant project. Pearls + tourism.
Mandalay Gem Market
Chinese Traders Scooping Up Mandalay Gems, Precious Stones
http://www.irrawaddy.org/highlight.php?art_id=15230
The Mandalay gem market includes jade, rubies, sapphires and other precious stones that come from six areas of Burma: Mogok in Mandalay Division; Mongshu in Shan State; Khamti in Sagaing Division; and Moe-Nyin, Hpakant and Namya in Kachin State.
Useful links:
www.myawaddytrade.com
http://myanmarrubyenterprise.com
http://www.irrawaddy.org/highlight.php?art_id=15230
The Mandalay gem market includes jade, rubies, sapphires and other precious stones that come from six areas of Burma: Mogok in Mandalay Division; Mongshu in Shan State; Khamti in Sagaing Division; and Moe-Nyin, Hpakant and Namya in Kachin State.
Useful links:
www.myawaddytrade.com
http://myanmarrubyenterprise.com
Emerald Market Update
Emeralds: Market Effect of Origin & Treatments, Pricing & Disclosure
http://www.gemguide.com/news/AGTAMar2009.html
Useful links:
www.gemguide.com
www.agta.org
Gemologists and gem dealers should take note of the interpretations on treatments and pricing of emeralds by the experts.
http://www.gemguide.com/news/AGTAMar2009.html
Useful links:
www.gemguide.com
www.agta.org
Gemologists and gem dealers should take note of the interpretations on treatments and pricing of emeralds by the experts.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
The 50 People
Future of Capitalism: 50 people who will frame the debate
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7f6f08da-0d7d-11de-8914-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1
Useful link:
www.group30.org
Influential/Impressive line-up.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7f6f08da-0d7d-11de-8914-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1
Useful link:
www.group30.org
Influential/Impressive line-up.
Art Fair
The Way an Art Fair should be
http://moreintelligentlife.com/story/fountain-river
Useful links:
www.leokesting.com
www.thearmoryshow.com
http://fountainexhibit.com/blog
www.mccaigwelles.com
www.suckerchump.com
www.selftaughtart.org.nz
www.donnacleary.net
www.faile.net
www.elbow-toe.com
www.howlingprint.com
www.chrisstain.com
www.deitch.com
www.switchbacksea.org
www.berkoy.com
www.experimentaltvcenter.org
http://dianedwyer.com
Great essay.
http://moreintelligentlife.com/story/fountain-river
Useful links:
www.leokesting.com
www.thearmoryshow.com
http://fountainexhibit.com/blog
www.mccaigwelles.com
www.suckerchump.com
www.selftaughtart.org.nz
www.donnacleary.net
www.faile.net
www.elbow-toe.com
www.howlingprint.com
www.chrisstain.com
www.deitch.com
www.switchbacksea.org
www.berkoy.com
www.experimentaltvcenter.org
http://dianedwyer.com
Great essay.
Gold Disposal
How to Make a Killing in Gold Disposal Without Killing Your Conscience or Your Customers
http://www.colored-stone.com/stories/mar09/gold-fever.cfm
Interesting perspective. Gold is the life blood of the jewelry industry.
http://www.colored-stone.com/stories/mar09/gold-fever.cfm
Interesting perspective. Gold is the life blood of the jewelry industry.
Art Update
France's Artistic Mettle in Metal
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123663508450676221.html
Useful link:
www.metmuseum.org
Outstanding works of art. A must visit.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123663508450676221.html
Useful link:
www.metmuseum.org
Outstanding works of art. A must visit.
Nouriel Roubini Viewpoint
Economist Nouriel Roubini's viewpoint
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1882729,00.html
Useful link:
www.rgemonitor.com
Let's hope for the best and prepare for the worst.
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1882729,00.html
Useful link:
www.rgemonitor.com
Let's hope for the best and prepare for the worst.
Luc Besson
Luc Besson's Growing Film Empire
http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/mar2009/gb2009039_713997.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index+-+temp_global+business
Useful links:
www.luc-besson.com
www.europacorp.com
www.europacorp-corporate.com
It's the chemistry of the moment. How true!
http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/mar2009/gb2009039_713997.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index+-+temp_global+business
Useful links:
www.luc-besson.com
www.europacorp.com
www.europacorp-corporate.com
It's the chemistry of the moment. How true!
Top 10 Graphic Novels 2009
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Wallace Chan
Meet gemstone and jewelry artist Wallace Chan
www.wallace-chan.com
His designs are innovative + stunningly beautiful.
www.wallace-chan.com
His designs are innovative + stunningly beautiful.
Open House Day
The South Australia Chamber of Minerals and Energy runs a uranium open day with the hard-to-resist promise: 'See radioactivity with your own eyes'. Check out the link www.resourcessa.org.au
Janice Dorn Viewpoint
Dorn: Three Simple Trading Lessons
http://www.cnbc.com/id/29595027
Useful links:
www.thetradingdoctor.com
www.ingenieux.com
Inspiring essay. Thank you Janice.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/29595027
Useful links:
www.thetradingdoctor.com
www.ingenieux.com
Inspiring essay. Thank you Janice.
Photo-Morphosis
Model-morphosis Christian Dior
http://themoment.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/model-morphosis
Useful link:
www.kesslerstudio.com
Amazing transformation. Brilliant photography. Layers of meaning.
http://themoment.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/model-morphosis
Useful link:
www.kesslerstudio.com
Amazing transformation. Brilliant photography. Layers of meaning.
Bill Cunningham Viewpoint
On the Street Slush Fun
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/03/07/fashion/20090308-substreet-feature/index.html#
Brilliant commentary. Thank you Bill.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/03/07/fashion/20090308-substreet-feature/index.html#
Brilliant commentary. Thank you Bill.
The Extraordinary World Of Ants
Six legs good
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/mar/09/ants-nature-research
http://www.bio.bris.ac.uk/research/behavior/AntLab/index.htm
Useful links:
www.eowilson.org
www.bio.bris.ac.uk
Great essay. I loved it. Thank you Alok.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/mar/09/ants-nature-research
http://www.bio.bris.ac.uk/research/behavior/AntLab/index.htm
Useful links:
www.eowilson.org
www.bio.bris.ac.uk
Great essay. I loved it. Thank you Alok.
William Shakespeare Portrait
Original Bard portrait unveiled
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7932901.stm
Useful links:
www.shakespeare.org.uk
www.npg.org.uk
This is a very fine painting indeed.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7932901.stm
Useful links:
www.shakespeare.org.uk
www.npg.org.uk
This is a very fine painting indeed.
Random Thoughts
The economy will be in shambles throughout 2009 — and, for that matter, probably well beyond — but that conclusion does not tell us whether the stock market will rise or fall.
- Warren Buffett
www.berkshirehathaway.com
Spot on.
- Warren Buffett
www.berkshirehathaway.com
Spot on.
Monday, March 09, 2009
Mae Sot Gem Trade
Trying to get its sparkle back
http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/local/12909/trying-to-get-its-sparkle-back
The market is teeming with Thais and foreigners shopping for gemstones at shops on both sides of Prasatvithi road in downtown Mae Sot. There are also a lot of gem brokers hired to buy and sell gemstones for profit on behalf of others. The brokers include Thais, Burmese and Nepalese. Gemstones on the market include uncut lumps of stone varying in size and price. The Rim Moei gem market in Mae Sot is also popular among shoppers and tourists. It is located near the Thai-Burmese Bridge in Ban Rim Moei in Tambon Sai Luad. The gem trade in Mae Sot is also linked to trade in Mae Sai in Chiang Rai and Chanthaburi. Many gem traders from Chanthaburi have moved and now run gem businesses in Mae Sot.
- Supamart Kasem, Bangkok Post
The gem markets in Bangkok, Chantaburi, Mae Sot are very quiet. Customers are very few and many are going out of business due to economic crisis.
http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/local/12909/trying-to-get-its-sparkle-back
The market is teeming with Thais and foreigners shopping for gemstones at shops on both sides of Prasatvithi road in downtown Mae Sot. There are also a lot of gem brokers hired to buy and sell gemstones for profit on behalf of others. The brokers include Thais, Burmese and Nepalese. Gemstones on the market include uncut lumps of stone varying in size and price. The Rim Moei gem market in Mae Sot is also popular among shoppers and tourists. It is located near the Thai-Burmese Bridge in Ban Rim Moei in Tambon Sai Luad. The gem trade in Mae Sot is also linked to trade in Mae Sai in Chiang Rai and Chanthaburi. Many gem traders from Chanthaburi have moved and now run gem businesses in Mae Sot.
- Supamart Kasem, Bangkok Post
The gem markets in Bangkok, Chantaburi, Mae Sot are very quiet. Customers are very few and many are going out of business due to economic crisis.
Kerala's Gold Rush
Kerala is Gold’s Country: World's No.1 gold jeweller
http://www.commodityonline.com/news/Kerala-is-Gold’s-Country-Worlds-No1-gold-jeweller-15835-3-1.html
Useful links:
http://kalyansarees.co.in
www.houseofalapatt.com
www.tbztheoriginal.com
www.ageeripai.com
www.bhimajewellery.com
www.alukkas.com
www.francisalukkas.com
www.malabargoldindia.com
www.joscogroup.com
www.goldsoukindia.com
I completely agree. Keralites are addicted to gold/jewelry + gold rules.
http://www.commodityonline.com/news/Kerala-is-Gold’s-Country-Worlds-No1-gold-jeweller-15835-3-1.html
Useful links:
http://kalyansarees.co.in
www.houseofalapatt.com
www.tbztheoriginal.com
www.ageeripai.com
www.bhimajewellery.com
www.alukkas.com
www.francisalukkas.com
www.malabargoldindia.com
www.joscogroup.com
www.goldsoukindia.com
I completely agree. Keralites are addicted to gold/jewelry + gold rules.
Inconvenient Truths
Inconvenient Truths
http://www.artnewsonline.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=2640
Useful links:
www.petgo.de
www.jmberlin.de
www.lootedart.com
www.english.imjnet.org.il
Interesting info. Thanks Robin.
http://www.artnewsonline.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=2640
Useful links:
www.petgo.de
www.jmberlin.de
www.lootedart.com
www.english.imjnet.org.il
Interesting info. Thanks Robin.
Random Thoughts
I expect to pass through life but once. If therefore, there be any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do to any fellow being, let me do it now, and not defer or neglect it, as I shall not pass this way again.
- William Penn
www.williampenn.org
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Penn
Spot on.
- William Penn
www.williampenn.org
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Penn
Spot on.
Artist As An Avatar
Portrait of an Artist as an Avatar
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/magazine/08fluno-t.html?_r=1
Useful links:
www.jeffreylipskyarts.com
www.secondlife.com
http://minskyreport.com
www.filthyfluno.blogspot.com
Great review. Hats off to Jeffrey Lipsky.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/magazine/08fluno-t.html?_r=1
Useful links:
www.jeffreylipskyarts.com
www.secondlife.com
http://minskyreport.com
www.filthyfluno.blogspot.com
Great review. Hats off to Jeffrey Lipsky.
Fespaco Film Awards 2009
Delights of Africa's chaotic film festival
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7931321.stm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/africa/2009/02/000000_fespaco2009.shtml
Useful link:
www.fespaco.bf
It's Africa's answer to the Oscars.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7931321.stm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/africa/2009/02/000000_fespaco2009.shtml
Useful link:
www.fespaco.bf
It's Africa's answer to the Oscars.
Sunday, March 08, 2009
Green Union
Style/Sustainable Celebrations = Green Union
www.greenunion.co.uk
Best advice: Be conscious of consumption. Become aware of your carbon footprint and make changes in your lifestyle. Practice.
www.greenunion.co.uk
Best advice: Be conscious of consumption. Become aware of your carbon footprint and make changes in your lifestyle. Practice.
Gold In The Closet
Cash In A Mattress? No, Gold In The Closet.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/188138
On the day I held the gold bar in my hand, it was worth nearly $100,000. My companion—an established, accomplished, affluent businessman of retirement age—had bought it as a hedge against the sinking Dow and his fear that Obama's stimulus package will inevitably trigger wild inflation. We had picked it up in the basement of an HSBC bank branch in midtown Manhattan. When I handed it back to him, he put it in his briefcase. We went upstairs, past guards, through metal doors. Out on the street, we said goodbye and I watched him go, a tall, thin man carrying a $100,000 briefcase. He doesn't want me to tell you his name—or, really, anything about him—because he's keeping the gold in a safe in his basement. His friends, he says, are doing the same thing.
- Lisa Miller
Useful links:
www.thegartmanletter.com
www.gold.org
www.apmex.com
www.dailyreckoning.com
www.monex.com
www.1stfederalcoin.com
www.amnumsoc.org
www.kitco.com
http://goldmoney.com
People are buying/hoarding gold in case the unimaginable happens. It's a state of mind. Old habits die hard.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/188138
On the day I held the gold bar in my hand, it was worth nearly $100,000. My companion—an established, accomplished, affluent businessman of retirement age—had bought it as a hedge against the sinking Dow and his fear that Obama's stimulus package will inevitably trigger wild inflation. We had picked it up in the basement of an HSBC bank branch in midtown Manhattan. When I handed it back to him, he put it in his briefcase. We went upstairs, past guards, through metal doors. Out on the street, we said goodbye and I watched him go, a tall, thin man carrying a $100,000 briefcase. He doesn't want me to tell you his name—or, really, anything about him—because he's keeping the gold in a safe in his basement. His friends, he says, are doing the same thing.
- Lisa Miller
Useful links:
www.thegartmanletter.com
www.gold.org
www.apmex.com
www.dailyreckoning.com
www.monex.com
www.1stfederalcoin.com
www.amnumsoc.org
www.kitco.com
http://goldmoney.com
People are buying/hoarding gold in case the unimaginable happens. It's a state of mind. Old habits die hard.
Greg McCoach Viewpoint
Greg McCoach: Gold — $2,000/oz. by Year’s End?
http://www.theaureport.com/pub/na/2318
Useful links:
www.miningspeculator.com
www.theaureport.com
Interesting perspective. Gold has already become headline news with real opportunities and big returns. I think the gold honeymoon will become a learning situation for many.
http://www.theaureport.com/pub/na/2318
Useful links:
www.miningspeculator.com
www.theaureport.com
Interesting perspective. Gold has already become headline news with real opportunities and big returns. I think the gold honeymoon will become a learning situation for many.
Larry Gagosian
Pulling Art Sales Out of Thinning Air
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/business/08larry.html
Mr. Gagosian, in short, is a one-man Nasdaq, an exchange where he helps set the price, not to mention the size of his commission. Unlike an actual stock exchange, though, this one is always open for business, and when it doesn’t get expected trades, it gets loud and profane. Mr. Gagosian has been known to pepper art consultants contemplating the terms of a deal with 20 calls in a single day, and if the answer isn’t the one he wants, you’re advised to keep the children away from the phone.
- David Segal
Useful link:
www.gagosian.com
The curious story of Larry Gagosian was interesting. Thank you David.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/business/08larry.html
Mr. Gagosian, in short, is a one-man Nasdaq, an exchange where he helps set the price, not to mention the size of his commission. Unlike an actual stock exchange, though, this one is always open for business, and when it doesn’t get expected trades, it gets loud and profane. Mr. Gagosian has been known to pepper art consultants contemplating the terms of a deal with 20 calls in a single day, and if the answer isn’t the one he wants, you’re advised to keep the children away from the phone.
- David Segal
Useful link:
www.gagosian.com
The curious story of Larry Gagosian was interesting. Thank you David.
Johan van der Dong Project
Dutch leave messages on God phone
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7929799.stm
Useful links:
www.johanvanderdong.nl
www.radionetherlands.nl
Brave new art project, really. I hope Johan van der Dong isn't misunderstood.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7929799.stm
Useful links:
www.johanvanderdong.nl
www.radionetherlands.nl
Brave new art project, really. I hope Johan van der Dong isn't misunderstood.
Creativity + Art
A New Creativity?
http://www.artnewsonline.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=2641
I’d say the bohemian fantasy is sweet and sentimental, but rather insulting to artists. In my experience, artists do what they do, market or no market. During the ‘80s boom, terrific work was being made by artists who barely got the time of day, and some of them were artists we simply started to look at in the ‘90s as the dust settled from the crash. That will happen again.
- Christopher Knight, Art critic, Los Angeles Times
You sometimes need five to seven years to learn your craft, to pull it together, and you live off the crumbs of a vigorous market. When the market closes down, the crumbs disappear and a lot of artists are pretty much destroyed or really seriously hampered.
- Alex Katz
Useful links:
www.alexkatz.com
www.vmfa.state.va.us
www.moca-la.org
www.performa-arts.org
www.lacma.org
www.galerielelong.com
www.bard.edu/ccs
www.tate.org.uk
www.ps1.org
www.queensmuseum.org
www.sfmoma.org
www.aldrichart.org
www.schoolofvisualarts.edu
www.newmuseum.org
www.labiennale.org
www.philamuseum.org
http://art.yale.edu
www.mocanomi.org
Spot on. I think 2009 = 1989 + the boom/bust cycle will continue forever. Ann, Thank you for the insightful article.
http://www.artnewsonline.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=2641
I’d say the bohemian fantasy is sweet and sentimental, but rather insulting to artists. In my experience, artists do what they do, market or no market. During the ‘80s boom, terrific work was being made by artists who barely got the time of day, and some of them were artists we simply started to look at in the ‘90s as the dust settled from the crash. That will happen again.
- Christopher Knight, Art critic, Los Angeles Times
You sometimes need five to seven years to learn your craft, to pull it together, and you live off the crumbs of a vigorous market. When the market closes down, the crumbs disappear and a lot of artists are pretty much destroyed or really seriously hampered.
- Alex Katz
Useful links:
www.alexkatz.com
www.vmfa.state.va.us
www.moca-la.org
www.performa-arts.org
www.lacma.org
www.galerielelong.com
www.bard.edu/ccs
www.tate.org.uk
www.ps1.org
www.queensmuseum.org
www.sfmoma.org
www.aldrichart.org
www.schoolofvisualarts.edu
www.newmuseum.org
www.labiennale.org
www.philamuseum.org
http://art.yale.edu
www.mocanomi.org
Spot on. I think 2009 = 1989 + the boom/bust cycle will continue forever. Ann, Thank you for the insightful article.
Where Are The Customers' Yachts?
Where Are the Customers' Yachts? or A Good Hard Look at Wall Street by Fred Schwed is a delightful classic + provides breezy and funny 1940 perspective on investing. A must read.Saturday, March 07, 2009
Small Business Podcasts 2009
100 Best Small Business Podcasts 2009
http://www.smbtrendwire.com/2009/02/16/100-best-small-business-podcasts-2009
Useful links:
http://smallbiztrends.com
http://anitacampbell.com
Inspiring. Anita, Thank you.
http://www.smbtrendwire.com/2009/02/16/100-best-small-business-podcasts-2009
Useful links:
http://smallbiztrends.com
http://anitacampbell.com
Inspiring. Anita, Thank you.
Graphic Books Update
Introducing The New York Times Graphic Books Best Seller Lists
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/05/introducing-the-new-york-times-graphic-books-best-seller-lists
Useful link:
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/05/introducing-the-new-york-times-graphic-books-best-seller-lists
Useful link:
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com
Random Thoughts
The burnt customer certainly prefers to believe that he has been robbed rather than that he has been a fool on the advice of fools.
- Fred Schwed
Author, Where Are the Customers' Yachts?
Spot on.
- Fred Schwed
Author, Where Are the Customers' Yachts?
Spot on.
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