Passione in Napoli
Passione, a film by John Turturro, explores Naples and its dynamic musical heritage. I viewed the documentary at a screening sponsored by the InterAmerican Development Bank in Washington, DC, part of “Italy @ 150″ celebrating the 150th anniversary year of Italian unification. The year long program was organized by the Smithsonian Institution. The multi-venue cultural celebration started on March 17, 2011, the 150th anniversary of Il Risorgimento.
Released in 2010, Passione was praised by critics, but is unlikely to appear in the local cineplex. The scenes can be gritty and emotionally charged, which can unnerve the bourgeoisie. Too bad — we could all use a dose of the resilience, chaos and and life embracing realism of Naples. “Singing is emotional transportation,” says John Tutturro, during this documentary that strings together the many cultural influences on Neapolitan song and performance style. 
Tutturro’s film captures the Baroque facades of Neapolitan churches, the splashes of graffiti and faces etched by smiles and worries. The director encourages folks on the street to sing songs that typify the culture, then cuts to longer versions by professional singers rendering the same material. Clips of U.S. soldiers who arrived during World War II as an occupying army that stayed for decades explains some of the multi-ethnic gene pool of Napoli and its music. Greeks, Arabs, Berbers, Slavs, Visigoths, Spaniards, Celtic-Scandinavian Normans, French, African-Americans are some of the musical ancestors. The people’s music of Napoli characterizes a world city, a delicious mix of cultures and sensuality.
Paca House Gardens in Annapolis
On October 15, 2011, I joined a group of artists led by Jean Brinton Jaecks in the gardens of the William Paca House, Annapolis, Maryland.
I sketched the summer house and the purple beans shown below to the right. Didn’t attempt the tobacco plant.
Journal Writing : Hill Arts Center
Have you noticed a resurgence of interest in journal writing (personal diary, memoir, life writing), a subject I specialized in teaching during the early years of the National Museum of Women in the Arts? New workshops in 21st century journal writing will be offered at the Hill Arts Center, a fantastic renovated historic space. Register for my journal writing workshops through the Writer’s Center. Journal writing and visual diaries (scrapbooks, collage, self-portraits) offer perspectives to our inner lives.
More about L Peat O’Neil.
Color Me Zelda : Ballet Diary
FLASH!!! Rare look at Zelda Fitzgerald’s art work on view at Evergreen Museum in Baltimore until January 29, 2012. http://www.museums.jhu.edu/_media/uploads/eml_zelda.pdf
Ballet Diary
August, 2011 Gorgeous dance studio. Barre is installed at an odd height, like a stair railing for giants with long arms. Designers clearly did not consult the dance professor. Class group is a mix of those who have never studied ballet to a current high school dance teacher. Prof. Meryl Shapiro directs us through barre work, terminology and suggestions about paying attention to the music.
My fears that I will be too tired to keep up or forgetful of past ballet positions and steps are groundless. I’m surprised that I can remember so much from decades ago. Barre work includes plie, grand plie, tendu, sous-sou en releve, port de bras, stretches. Must look up the correct spelling of the steps and accents.
September, 2011
Relearning and remembering “en croix”, the pattern of barre exercises where the leg away from the barre moves to the front, side, back, and again to the side. Floor work includes balance, chasse coupe. I’m weak on my left side. Can’t remember patterns as readily as on right side. Why is that? Brain fog, dominant side wiping out any left side body memory? I should practice more on the left to ensure body memory.
Looked up en croix in the ABT Ballet Dictionary:
Croix, en [ahn krwah]
In the shape of a cross. Indicates that an exercise is to be executed to the fourth position front, to the second position and to the fourth position back, or vice versa. As, for example, in battements tendus en croix.
Pas de bourrée added to the combination. Video demonstration in the ABT site shows the bent, elevated leg with foot placed at the knee which I know I’m not doing correctly.
Our class works on the combination pattern to which more steps are added each week. Grande jeté is my downfall. I have limited elevation and mix up which foot starts the leap. Step…step…step…leap or is it step…step…leap, with the leap being the third step? I’m thinking too much. Prof. Meryl says to let the music guide dance movements. If I think less about the “right” steps and more about what the music suggests I might improve my body-music flow!
Zelda Fitzgerald, F. Scott’s lady, studied ballet before she married the author of Tender is the Night, The Great Gatsby and The Beautiful and the Damned. Later as an adult, she resumed ballet classes, while the couple lived in the South of France. She was quite passionate about it. Too bad there was no YouTube back in the 1920s.
Zelda Sayre in Montgomery, Alabama.
This image was published before 1923 and is in the public domain in the US.
Write Your Life
e-How offers ideas on how to start writing a diary or journal. The end of year holiday season offers time for social events and solitude, the perfect mix for observing and reflecting on one’s life and reporting the details in a diary.
My Geographical Life
People often ask me about my travels and experiences in remote places such as the car trip across North Africa, camping out in scrubland or near the sea; climbing volcanos in Sumatra, Lombok, and the Moluccas; trekking in New Zealand; kayaking on Lake Biwa, Japan; and rafting and hiking in Kamchatka.
It all started with a passion for maps. 
Some of those adventures became travel articles or were anthologized in travel books. One solo journey is recorded in detail in my book Pyrenees Pilgrimage, published in 2010.
In 2001 I walked across France alone through the Pyrenees Mts. and foothills from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea, a difficult and strengthening experience. I’ve planned other cross-country walking journeys which I plan to do in the coming years.
I wandered North America extensively during the 1970s with multiple cross country trips by car, train, bus and occasionally, thumb. I lived briefly in Missoula, MT, and for much longer periods in Santa Cruz, CA, San Francisco, CA and St. Petersburg, FL. During the 1970s and 1980s, I spent time in every lower 48 U.S. state and camped out National or State Parks in many of the central, southern and western states. I also visited Mexico and travelled across Canada by land a couple of times.
It wasn’t until 1992 that I visited Hawai’i to which I’ve returned several times. In 1993 I traveled the southern area of Alaska, travelling rough on the state-run inland passage ferry on my way to Anchorage for a month- long stay on Kamchatka, back when Alaska Air ran flights from to the Russian Far East.
Other places I visited during the early 1980s include: Italy – Sardinia, Sicily and Elba. With my companion, I traveled by bus or train and camped out on beaches or occasionally stayed in pensions or with friends. Traveled through Costa Rica for 2 months in the winter of 1982 and visited the region of South West France many times.
After I started working for the Washington Post and tried my hand writing travel articles for the paper and many other publications (and later on, websites) my travel ramped up because a few short trips were at the invitation of foreign governments (Yugoslavia before their civil wars) or paid for by magazines (Zurich, Milan, Hamburg, Frankfurt).
Though most people assume my travel was paid for by the Washington Post, that was never the case. I worked in a freelance capacity. I arranged my own long adventures with unpaid leaves of absence from work for long Asian trips during the 1980s and 1990s. Just as I had saved for my first solo trip in 1966, I habitually worked at two or three jobs during the 1980s and 1990s to support my thirst for travel. I explored Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan in Central Asian on a trek with an outfitter in 1998, rather than going solo. Freelance writers know that magazines and newspapers don’t cover travel expenses.
In all, I’ve spent time in more than 90 countries. I’ve lived (had an address, cooked my own meals, my own library cards and/or driving permits) in China, France, Mexico, Canada and Italy. During the years when I was living in Mexico and China, I was an employee of the US government and my travel within those countries was entirely at my expense.
Tradecraft of a Travel Writer
This was fun to write! I shared trade secrets about travel writing in the May-June 2011 issue of Writer’s Digest Magazine. Explain that turquoise facade on the building in the background? Location?
Following Footsteps of Suzanne Volquin in Egypt
As soon as Egypt reorganizes its social scene for travelers, I plan to spend time in the Copt quarter of Cairo, at the Monastery of the Franciscans, the Chateau des Chandrelles (Assai-el-Chom) and the Hospital d’Abou Zabel.
These places are associated with the 19th century French pre-socialist group known as the Saint-Simonians. They bear this name in honor of the philosopher Henri de Saint-Simon who promoted the original idea of constructing the Suez Canal in the 18th century, along with other socially progressive concepts.
During the period 1832-1836, Suzanne Volquin (portrait at right) and several other women
Saint-Simonians left France with St. Simonian men to work in Cairo and the environs, where they taught and nursed the local citizens. The composer Felician David was part of the community. The group was decimated by a cholera outbreaks during the 1830s and many of them were buried in the Copt quarter of Cairo. Suzanne Volquin traveled to Russia to teach mid-wifery there. She eventually emigrated to the United States of America.
Some of the French group stayed on or returned to work with de Ferdinand de Lesseps when he took over the Suez Canal project based in Ismailia and Port Said, places I hope to visit.As many of the group members came from banking families, they later participated in structuring early funding for the canal.
My purpose is spending time in Cairo and on various historic areas related to the construction of the Suez Canal will be to explore the history and to finish my manuscript about the French women and their work to establish a clinic and school for mid-wives.
Riff on Silence
Train on my way to Savannah, Gee A. Mix of people new to train travel and old timers who know the routines. Pervasive rings of mobile phones display the only creativity modern AmeriCan-Bandana allows: What is your ring-tone?
While most want to fill the space with sound, the rest of us are struggling to empty the sound from our space.
What is the next killer app people asked, back in the 1990s after Netscape, after Red Hat, after Af-Ta. The next one will be the one that silences everything. I don’t mean replacing ambient noise with an iPod generated music mask. My sound neutralizer is a variation of Baby Quiet ®, the helmet that prevents your attention deficient youngster from bashing its brains out against the cement wall in the day care center that wasn’t your first choice but will do the job.
Silence is more than golden. More precious than diamonds and not easy to obtain. When what is most precious is gone, the restoration costs more in terms of energy and effort.
Will Bose ®, the quiet headphones company sponsor a competion to improve and expand silence?
I found this quote: ”Don’t speak unless you improve silence .” (Jesus Nebot) from this website Speaker Net News.
Art Emerges with Mystery
“Every creative artist is a unique individual who has (her) his feet firmly planted in mid-air. He uses all his negative energies — tensions, anxieties and other vulnerabilities — and transforms them into rich reservoirs of positive forces, from which (her) his art emerges carrying with it the mystery and wonder of the unknown.” Michael Ponce de Leon
Who is Michael Ponce de Leon, I wondered, as I copied this quotation from an exhibition of Jung’s metaphysical work The Red Book at the Library of Congress, Autumn 2010? Clearly an artist who understands process of transformation, consciousness and catalyst creation.
The New York State Archives answered:
- Ponce de Leon, Michael, 1922-
Michael Ponce de Leon papers, 1943-1979
1.0 linear ft. (partially microfilmed on 2 reels)
Microfilmed portion must be consulted on microfilm. Use of unmicrofilmed portion requires an appointment and is limited to Washington, D.C. storage facility.Printmaker, cartoonist; New York, N.Y. Correspondence; sketchbooks; writings; photographs; drawings; exhibition catalogs and announcements; and clippings.REELS N69-127 & N70-14: Correspondence relating to Ponce de Leon’s service as a cartoonist with the U.S. Air Force during World War II, his trip, 1967-1968, to India, Pakistan and Southeast Asia sponsored by the U.S. State Department to encourage better relations through art, his teaching appointments and exhibits; journal notes and writings concerning his trips to India, Cambodia and Thailand, his own work, teaching, Norwegian graphics and the art process; sketches and cartoons; sketchbooks containing figure studies, still lifes and sketches of Indian life; clippings, exhibition catalogs and printed material; and photographs of Ponce de Leon and his works of art. Correspondents include Elmer Davis for the O.W.I., critic John Canaday, art historian Jacinto Quirarte, and others.
UNMICROFILMED: A congratulatory letter from David Goddard upon receiving a Guggenheim award, 1967; photos and slides of Ponce de Leon’s work, a slide of him in a workshop, and photos showing his metal collage intaglio printing technique; exhibition catalogs and announcements, reprints, clippings, miscellaneous notes, three cartoon drawings, and an intaglio, “There’s a Time.”
35mm microfilm reels N69-127 & N70-14 available for use at Archives of American Art offices and through interlibrary loan. Material on reels N69-127 & N70-14 lent for microfilming 1969 and unmicrofilmed material donated 1977-1979 by Michael Ponce de Leon. Reels N69-127 & N70-14: Originals returned to Michael Ponce de Leon after microfilming.
Subjects: Prints — Technique — 20th century.; War in art.; World War, 1940-1945 — Caricatures and cartoons.; Hispanic American artists.
