TheMindCreative JANUARY 2015
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Editors’sNote
Radiography is a serious science but even this subject cannot escape from the clutches of the creative mind. The cover story is this issue dwells on the use of radiography and X-rays in creating the most imaginative and unusual artistic materials. In fact, science has often been at the core of creative minds, helping them to create gadgets and technology that form the very basis of art and entertainment. Ralph Baer was one such mind. Unknown to most of the world, his creations became the foundation of the gaming industry and I take great pleasure in presenting the story of his life in the new section “The Scientist’s Corner”.
The world has on many occasions shaped the lives of individuals based on, believe it or not, their physical attributes and one of the most enduring stories is that of Julia Pastrana. I would urge the reader to spare some time to read this amazing essay that describes her life story is The “Essayists Corner”. This issue also has it’s other regular ‘corners’ including a few short poems by Dorothy Parker. I have covered the life story of Parker in one of the previous issues. Her poems have always tugged at my heartstrings and her ability to combine sarcasm with the facts of life is indeed unique. I hope that the new year has started well for you and I also hope to add to your reading joys through this e-zine’s articles, about the vast and sometimes unique creative bents of the human mind.
Science is also at the heart of computer based visual art applications that help in the creation of extraordinary works of art by transforming vivid imagination into incredible imagery. In this issue, I Happy reading!! take great pleasure in the fact that one of the leading digital artists of the world, Android Jones, has kindly consented to his works being published in this issue in “The Artist’s Corner” section. The sketches reproduced here were inspired Jones’ visit to India. 2
In This Issue 6
ART in Radiography
13 The Scientist’s Corner
Reference: Dr. Rajiv Rattan
Ralph Baer - The Father of Video Games
20 The Artist’s Corner With Android Jones
27 The Foodie’s Corner
35 The Essayist’s Corner
World’s Most Expensive Foods
Julia Pastrana - “A Monster To The Whole World”
47 The Fiction Writer’s Corner
By Bess Lovejoy
54 The Poet’s Corner
‘A Slander’ By Anton Chekov
Poems by Dorothy Parker
59 The Cartoonist’s Corner
63 The News and Events Corner 3
Contributors Andrew "Android" Jones
is a U.S. visual artist. He has created live art around the world, including digital visual art projections from the Sydney Opera House in Australia to the Ghats in Varanasi in India. Starting his career with George Lucas at Industrial Light and Magic, he later worked as a concept artist for Nintendo and became creative director and founder for the entertainment development company Massive Black Inc. In 2002, Jones helped found a non-profit online art community, conceptart.org, along with Jason Manley and artists like Coro Kaufman, which has attracted more than 80,000 registered users and more than 1.3 million international visits per month. His fine art features in The Shooting Gallery in San Francisco and he has work published in the Expose and D’Artiste art books. In 2007, his art is featured on the cover of the annual Spectrum magazine – a selection of the best fantasy art. He has worked with fashion designer Tiffa Novoa. As of April 2007, he has started to perform digital live painting at concerts. His artwork has been featured on album covers of several electronic, psybient and rock music artists such as Papa Roach, Bluetech, Beats Antique, Sporeganic, Phutureprimitive, and Tipper. Website: http://androidjones.com/
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
(29th January 1860 – 15 July 1904), was a Russian physician, dramaturge and author who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short stories in history. His career as a dramatist produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics. Chekhov practiced as a medical doctor throughout most of his literary career: "Medicine is my lawful wife", he once said, "and literature is my mistress." Along with Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg, Chekhov is often referred to as one of the three seminal figures in the birth of early modernism in the theater. 4
Dorothy Parker
Her biting wit made her a legend, but it also masked her lonely struggle with depression. A member of the Algonquin Round Table group of writers, she wrote criticism for Vogue,Vanity Fair, and later theNew Yorker. During the 1930s Parker moved to Hollywood,where she worked on such films as A Star Is Born, for which she won an Academy Award.
Bess Lovejoy
is the author of Rest in Pieces: The Curious Fates of Famous Corpses, which Amazon named one of the best books of 2013. She writes frequently about the darker corners of history, and her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time, The Smithsonian, Lapham's Quarterly, Slate, The Boston Globe, and elsewhere. She also works as a freelance editor and researcher for books and film. She is a member of The Order of the Good Death, and a founding member of Death Salon. She lives in Brooklyn, where she can usually be found at a library or a cemetery. Feel free to get in touch: besslovejoy (at) gmail.com. On Twitter: @besslovejoy or @Death_A_Day. The blog's home is: besslovejoy.wordpress.com. Represented by Jill Grinberg at Jill Grinberg Literary: jill@jillgrinbergliterary.com. For publicity enquiries related to Rest in Pieces, please contact Leah Johanson: leah.johanson@simonandschuster.com.
Dr. Rajiv Rattan is a radiologist by profession and confesses that since the time he was bitten by that incurable “creative bug”, he has been dabbling in poetry. In his own words, “inspiration also sometimes decides to descend in the form of painting, sketching and photography. Story writing, play writing, directing and acting in plays is something that makes me me feel alive.”
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ART in Radiography Reference: Dr. Rajiv Rattan 6
Creativity of the mind permeates in the most unexpected quarters in the world. Who would imagine that X-rays and radiology would be associated with visual arts? However, with the inclusion of technology into all forms of creative arts, radiology has also stamped its own mark. In fact, an interdisciplinary group from Belgrade, Serbia after having studied thousands of works of art has found that “radiologic artworks have become an important field of modern art." During their research, they identified 271 radiologic works produced by 59 ‘artists’. A study published in the July edition of the American Journal of Roentgenology (Vol. 199:1, pp. W24-W26) showed that the techniques of radiology have been successfully employed in producing works of art based on a range of entities (from images of body parts to the use of images in photographs, collages, sculpture and digital works). According to Dr. Slobodan Marinković, a professor of neuroanatomy at the University School of Medicine, "Radiology is also a specific and original method of artistic expression." Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen discovered X-rays in 1895 and with the iconic radiograph of his wife's hand, radiology established itself as one of the most important diagnostic tools. According to Dr. Marinković and his fellow researchers, radiology also established itself as an "effective way to visualize the hidden artistic beauty within the human and animal bodies". After the discovery of this ground-breaking technology, others (such as Viennese photo chemists Josef Maria Eder and Eduard Valenta) soon began experimenting and in 1896, Eder and Valenta modified 15 radiographs of animal skeletons, including an Aesculapian snake, a symbol of healing and medicine.
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"Aesculapian Snake" by Josef Maria Eder and Eduard Valenta. Image courtesy of Dr. Slobodan Marinković,AJR, and Oxford University Press. 8
Since then many artists have used this technique in their works. In the 1930s, Diego Rivera included a radiograph of a skull in his "Man at the Crossroads" mural. Wim Delvoye, a Belgian artist, created Gothic stained-glass windows featuring x-ray images of different body parts for the series "9 Muses." Diane Covert created collages of CT and x-ray scans of damaged body parts as part of her "Inside Terrorism" exhibit. Some artists (like Man Ray and László Moholy-Nagy) have also created "negative" images similar to radiographs using various techniques. while others such as Andy Warhol, Yves Klein, Albert Koetsier, Leslie Wright, and Steven Meyers created a colour-negative effect in drawings, paintings, or other works. A Hong Kong based radiologist Dr. Kai-Hung Fung, at the Pamela Youde Nethersole Easter hospital maps various organs using 3D computed tomography (CT) scans. After feeding the data into a computer, he then adds colour using his own methodology that he chooses to call “rainbow technique”.
"Network" by Dr. Kai-Hung Fung (© Kai-Hung Fung [Hong Kong] 2012) 9
The techniques of radiology have been taken beyond 2-D images by many artists, into the realms of sculpture. Some of the most extraordinary works have been created by Marilène Oliver where she printed full-body, life-sized MR images onto acrylic sheets. The sheets were then assembled into tall rectangular boxes, each one representing a family member. After this process, there are no software based modifications applied to the images. His extraordinary creations have been exhibited around the world with the proceeds donated to charity.
Family Portrait" (Sophie detail) by Marilène Oliver. Image courtesy of Marilène Oliver (www.marileneoliver.com). 10
And here are some intriguing radiography art from a presentation - courtesy of Dr. Rajiv Rattan
‘SMILEY’ CT brain – deep brain stimulus electrodes
‘COVOLUTIONS’ CT angiography of lower extremities -3-D reconstruction
‘ABRACABRA’ CT – Virtual colonoscopy
‘MAD MAX ON SUPER HIGHWAY’ CT angiography of lower extremities 11
‘BALINESE MASK’
‘THE BLUES BROTHERS’
Coronal MRI of the face
Ultrasound of hyper stimulated ovaries
‘THE LABYRINTH’
‘LEND ME YOUR EARS!’!
CT Brain displaying foramen magnum
CT sagittal view of soft tissues of face 12
The Scientist’s Corner 13
RALPH BAER
The Father Of Video Games 14
Although Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are household names, there are not many who have heard of Ralph Baer although his contribution to the home entertainment industry is arguably at par with Jobs and Gates. Baer was the inventor of the video game; he was the pioneer whose inventions gave birth to the gaming entertainment industry which is predicted to be around 111 billion dollars in 2015 (according to Gartner Inc). Baer (who passed away on 6th December, 2014 at the age of 92) has left behind a trail of relentless inventing abilities. Baer fled Nazi Germany with his family in 1938 and was recruited into the US Army in 1943 working for the military intelligence. At the age of 23, when the era of television dawned on the world, he returned to Europe to pursue a career as a TV engineer. He initially conceptualised the one-way model of broadcast to allow viewers to interact with images on TV during the mid-fifties. His employers, however, found his ideas to be outlandish and too expensive to implement. It was only in 1966, while waiting at a bus stop that he started reflecting once again about TV based games. After he had created a very basic and crude model that allowed two users to play “tag” on television by moving two dots around, he was granted an amount of $2500 as funding by his employer. With this funding, Baer worked towards making a more compact and functionally easier model. In the process he also invented the ‘light gun’ that allowed the user to point ‘guns’ at the TV as a mode of interaction. The seventh iteration of the machine (called “The Brown Box”) was completed in 1968 and it could output in colour and could run a few games including “Table Tennis”. Companies like Motorola and General Electric still failed to be impressed and showed no interest in manufacturing Baer’s device. However, the electronics company Magnavox decided to give it a try and in 1972, it produced a cut-down version of Baer’s machine and named it Magnavox Odyssey. Thus the very first commercially available home video game console was launched.
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Baer’s original Brown Box
Baer poses with the Odyssey in 1972. Courtesy: Ralph Baer Collection 16
Though stunningly simple by today's standards (the Odyssey could not even keep scores and came packed with dice and paper pads to supplement the play), the previously unimaginable concept of playing games on a TV drove a large amount of interest in the technology press and sold more than 300,000 units before it was discontinued in 1975. For a long time, Baer's inventions and legacy were overshadowed by the events that followed them. Having seen a demonstration of the Odyssey's tennis game, Nolan Bushnell - who would go on to found Atari - refined the concept, added sound and the ability to keep scores, and released the first successful arcade video game, Pong. Despite successfully suing Atari for patent infringement, Magnavox was unable to stop home versions of Pong proliferating, and unable to keep up, as Atari and others dominated the American home and arcade video game markets. Baer's immaculate note taking and collection of prototypes (all of which now reside in the Smithsonian museum ) show that he built a sound unit and additional games for the Odyssey but these were not implemented by Magnavox.
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At the time of this death, Baer had amassed about 150 patents for products including talking books, talking greeting cards and door mats. He had created many famous board games such as SIMON for Milton Bradley, and Laser Command. He had invented interfaces for turning audio tapes and video cassettes into games, creating toys such as '90s favourite TV Teddy’. He even produced technology used in surgical cutting equipment and submarine-tracking systems. It was not until the early 2000s that Baer staked his claim to inventing home gaming, an industry he left only years after producing the machine that prompted it. This turned out to be a good move given the industry would soon crash on the back of unchecked quality control. He received a G-Phoria Legend award in 2005, the GDC Pioneer Award in 2008 and the IEEE Edison Medal for his contributions. In 2006 he was awarded the National Medal of Technology by President George W. Bush, and in a review of his autobiography, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak said "I can never thank Ralph enough for what he gave to me and everyone else".
Some of Baer’s inventions: Magnavox game console, the light gun and game cartridges
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In a US TV interview, Baer said: “I'm basically an artist. I'm no different than a painter who sits there and loves what he does." According to his son, Ralph Baer was working on an electronic doll two weeks before his death.
Ralph Baer posing in his personal lab with some of his most famous products.
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WITH
Android Jones 20
About Android Jones Integral Alchemy Android Jones’ pictorial work is one strain of a larger project that he calls “Electro-Mineralist Art.” Moving “beyond the traditional organic vegetable and animal technologies of pencils, ink, and brushes”, Android takes up emergent technologies that are crystalline, metallic, electronic and digital in their materiality and aesthetic feel, implicating a historical scheme that echoes the integral view of planetary evolution from physiosphere to biosphere to noosphere to theosphere; where the techno-media of exhibition artworks have been by and large, as the artist says, bound to or associated with the biologic. Android is classically trained in academic drawing and painting and this traditional art background is the foundation through which he bridges the knowledge of the past and brings it into the future. For a post-postmodern art of high noospheric and theospheric expression, Android instead upgrades to more resonate noospheric vehicles; where the crystalline or “mineralist”, proper to the physiosphere, is recovered as a marginalized inorganic principle for the artistic celebration of the energies of life. The content of these marvellous works ranges vastly from the cosmic to the micro, from tantric beloved to sacred civics, from expansions of consciousness to reconfigurations of our three bodies. The pictorial syntax is at the very least proper to a teal register; a collage mode descending from synthetic cubism. Subtle radiance and causal voids abound throughout. Honouring the history of art, the mystical projects of the later Dali come to mind, Android taps into pre-modern, modernist, and post-modernist aesthetic idioms, advancing an Electro-Mineralist Art as Integral Alchemy. Michael Schwartz - January 2014
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Artist Statement
Android Jones - Self Portrait “I have seen things in this life that I am incapable of translating into words. In my practice I have visited realms where the imagination ends, and the terrifying beauty of infinity unfolds over and over again. If I could distil into words exactly what motivates me to create the art that I make than it would not be worth making it. Instead I have chosen the Pen. I honestly don’t know why I make this art, or what compels me to keep creating it; it’s a mystery I intend to pursue for the rest of my life, and each image brings me closer to the Ultimate Truth.” 22
Boom Shiva 23
Ganesha Tron
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Shiva
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Naga Baba 26
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World s Most Expensive Foods References: http://most-expensive.com/foods http://www.therichest.com/ http://en.wikipedia.org/ 28
According to forbes.com: “It’s the Romans who are most famous for their fantastic feasting. In the 1st century AD, Emperor Vitellius produced an enormous platter called The Shield of Minerva, which included pike livers, pheasant and peacock brains, flamingo tongues, lamprey spleens and other luxury ingredients gathered from all corners of his empire. Other emperors played expensive tricks on their guests. In the 3rd century, Heliogabalus, renowned for enjoying cruel jokes, served up grains of gold mixed in with the peas, and amethysts, rubies and pearls in other dishes. The guests were allowed to keep the jewels in compensation for their wrecked teeth. At another banquet, Heliogabalus almost smothered his guests by raining down perfumed rose petals over them.�
Times have changed and you would think that indulgence in opulent foods would be rare and possibly on the decline. However, evidence in the modern times suggests otherwise. Opulent and extravagantly expensive foods and ingredients can be found across the world. The price of ingredients are, of course, based on their supply and the availability. These exorbitant ingredients are then used to create foods whose prices are well beyond our imagination.
So how much would you pay for food? A few hundred dollars for an unimaginable burger or an extravagant pizza? Possibly, by a good stretch of your imagination, a thousand dollars, for a rare and exotic food ingredient? Well you might be surprised with the answers when you read this article that looks at some of the most expensive foods and ingredients in the world.
Please note, that all prices are in US dollars.
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Wagyu Steak - $2800 per serve The Kobe variety of Wagyu beef is considered to the most elite among the Wagyu varieties. While for most of us, a steak around $50 would indicate quality, it is not the case at New York’s Craftsteak, where a full Wagyu rib eye was served up to a private party for $2800.
The Cultured Beef Burger - $332,000 The five-ounce Cultured Beef Burger was grown from stem cells by a Dutch scientist, Mark Post and the entire project was funded by Sergey Brin, CEO and co-founder of Google, to promote animal welfare. The burger (at a humbling price of $332,000) was featured at a launch event in London back in August of 2013. 30
La Madeline au Truffle $250 per piece Forbes magazine named the La Madeline au Truffle as the most expensive chocolate in the world. This decadent and rare French Perigord truffle is surrounded by Valrhona dark chocolate, heavy cream, sugar, truffle oil, and vanilla. The exterior is coated in powdered chocolate.
‘Pizza Royale 007' - Around $3,000 This pizza, created by chef Domenico Crolla, has some of the most expensive ingredients available including lobster marinated in cognac, caviar soaked in champagne, sunblush tomato sauce, Scottish smoked salmon, venison medallions, prosciutto, and vintage balsamic vinegar with a topping created with edible, 24-carat gold flakes. The Pizza Royale 007' was sold on eBay to The Fred Hollows Foundation.
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Iranian Beluga Caviar "Almas" around $35,000 per kg According to the Guiness Book of World Record, this variety of caviar is the most expensive in the world and it comes from the eggs of an extremely rare albino sturgeon, found in the Caspian Sea, that is around 60-100 years old.
Photo: azureazure.com
Yubari King - up to $20,000 for a 8 pound pair Grown in the greenhouses in Yūbari, Japan, the Yubari King Melon is valued for its exquisite proportions and flavour.
Photo: bornrich.com
The Golden Opulence Sundae - $1,000 The Golden Opulence Sundae was served at Serendipity 3 for the restaurant's 50th anniversary in 2004 and was named the most expensive sundae by the Guinness Book of World Records. The sundae is made with Tahitian Vanilla ice cream, 23 carat gold leaf, Amedei Porceleana (the worlds most expensive chocolate), candied fruits, gold draggets, truffles, marzipan cherries, and topped Photo: Courtesy: Serndipity with Grand Passion Caviar. 32
Italian White Alba Truffle – $160,406 Truffles have a reputation for being extremely expensive. They are difficult to cultivate and therefore have come to be known as true delicacies. The Associate Press reported that a real estate investor and his wife from Hong Kong paid $160,406 USD for a gigantic Italian White Alba truffle which is reportedly the world’s most expensive ever.
Photo: http://www.winebuzz.hk/
Saffron - $2,000/lb Saffron is the most expensive spice in the world and comes from the saffron crocus flower. It takes 75,000 dried filaments from the flower to make one pound of saffron.
Luxe Gold Cupcake - $1,227.70 Created by the Food Network, this cupcake is made from peach and champagne jam, Chateau d'Yquem buttercream and 24 carat gold leaf
Photo: The Daily Meal
Matsutake Mushroom $1000/pound The matsutake mushroom is one of the rarest mushrooms. There has been a dramatic decrease in the growth of thuis mushroom in recent years and a farming method has to be developed. 33
Samundari Khazana, the World’s Most Expensive Curry – $3200 per plate The curry was specially created by Bombay Brassiere to celebrate the DVD release of the movie Slumdog Millionaire. It was created with some of the most expensive ingredients including Devon crab, white truffle, a half tomato filled with Beluga caviar and dressed with gold leaf are just the start of this lavish dish. The dish also had A Scottish lobster coated with gold, four abalone and four shelled and hollowed quails’ eggs filled with even more caviar round out the dish.
Photo: http://boondocksseafoodco.com/ The World’s Most Expensive Bagel – $1000 Created by Executive Chef Frank Tujague for New York’s Westin Hotel, this bagel is topped with white truffle cream cheese and goji berry infused Riesling jelly with
Photo via: http://www.stuff.co.nz/ 34
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A “Monster to the Whole World” By Bess Lovejoy Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/ 36
When Julia Pastrana was born, in the mountains of Western Mexico in 1834, her mother worried that her looks were the result of supernatural interference. The local native tribes often blamed the naualli, a breed of shape-shifting werewolves, for stillbirths and deformities, and after seeing her daughter for the first time, Julia’s mother is said to have whispered their name. She fled her tribe — or was cast out — not long after. Two years later, Mexican herders searching for a missing cow found Julia and her mother hiding in a mountain cave. They took them to the nearest city, where Julia was placed in an orphanage. Sweet, intelligent, and almost totally covered in black hair, she became a local celebrity. After hearing of her unusual looks and charming disposition, the state governor adopted Julia to serve as a live-in amusement and maid. She stayed with the governor until she was twenty, when she decided to return to her own tribe. But she never completed the trip home: an American showman known as M. Rates met her somewhere on her journey back to the mountains, and persuaded her to take up a life onstage. Julia would go on to become one of the most famous human curiosities of the nineteenth century, variously known as “the Ape Woman,” “the Bear Woman,” or “the Baboon Lady.” She made her debut in December 1854, at the Gothic Hall on Broadway in New York City. She wore a red dress, sang Spanish folk tunes, and danced the Highland Fling. Huge, appreciative crowds flocked to see her, although it wasn’t really the singing and dancing they were after: they came to gawk at her hairy face and body, her jaw that jutted forward, her unusually large lips, and her wide, flat nose. The advance publicity billed Julia as a “Bear Woman from the wilds of Mexico!” while others said she looked like an ape. It’s worth noting that the idea that Julia was half-human didn’t originate with the press. Physician Alexander B. Mott, son of renowned New York surgeon Valentine Mott, examined her during a private back-room viewing and declared her a hybrid, halfhuman and half-orangutan. Other doctors agreed. At the time, orangutans were the biggest and most fearsome primate most Americans knew, a symbol of wild, primitive nature and 37
dangerous sexuality. The rampaging orangutan of Poe’s 1841 story The Murders in the Rue Morgue, who slits a beautiful woman’s throat with a straight razor, helped cement the associations of these creatures with horror, fascination, and sex. But the link wasn’t new: two hundred years arlier, Dutch doctor Jacob Bontius wrote that orangutans were “born from the lust of Indian women, who mix with apes and monkeys with detestable sensuality.”
And while Julia’s promotional material emphasized her femininity, in keeping with other representations of nineteenth century bearded women, it also underlined her animalistic, racialized otherness. Her promotional material referred to her tribe of “Root-Digger Indians” as “spiteful and hard to govern,” living in animal caves and enjoying intimate relations with bears and apes. The implications were clear: Julia was both a symbol of our repressed animal natures and the literal product of sex with beasts.
In England, where Julia ventured with a new impresario after successful tours of the eastern US and Canada, this otherness continued to be a useful promotional strategy. A poster advertising Julia’s show at London’s Regent Gallery, where she appeared three times a day in 1857, portrayed her with exaggerated, reddened lips and a large nose, much like contemporary racialized images of African-Americans. (This despite the fact that at least one doctor declared she had “no trace of Negro blood.”) The twelve-page promotional booklet that 38
Theodore Lent, Julia’s new showman, prepared advertised her as “the Baboon Lady,” and again described her parents’ close contact with wild animals. But it also assured audiences that in Julia “the nature of woman predominates over the ourangoutang’s,” and described her as sociable, clever, and kind. While Julia’s promotional package included certificates from scientists attesting to her hybrid nature, from the start there were those who knew she was entirely human. Anatomist Samuel Kneeland Jr,former curator of comparative anatomy for the Boston Natural Historical Society, examined Julia and declared her all human, and “a perfect woman, performing all the functions of her sex.” In 1857, the zoologist Francis Buckland visited her London hotel room and described her “hideous” facial features but “exceedingly good” figure, adding that she “had a sweet voice, great taste in music and dancing, and could speak three languages.” He added: “I believe that her true history was that she was simply a deformed Mexican Indian woman.” The most famous English scientist of the day, Charles Darwin, did not go to see her in London, but learned of her existence and of a cast taken of her teeth, which was supposed to show an irregular double set in both upper and lower jaws. In his Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Darwin compared Julia to hairless dogs, theorizing that skin disease in the animal world could be connected to excess teeth.
Julia, however, didn’t have extra teeth, just thickened gums that made misleading impressions on the casts. Had anyone bothered 39
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to ask her about her mouth, she would have explained that she had the usual number of teeth. But almost all the doctors who examined her directed their questions to Lent, while Julia kept silent. Silent but lucrative, which was how Lent liked it. Exhibiting Julia had made Lent a wealthy man, but by then rival showmen possibly even including P.T. Barnum, began to take an interest in her. Lent decided to make the arrangement with his living, breathing, investment more permanent; he proposed to Julia.
We don’t know exactly what Julia thought of Lent, although Bondeson believes she was in love and “touchingly devoted” to him. Certainly, Julia’s entire world revolved around her showman: she was not allowed to go out during the day, in case being seen on the street would diminish her earning power, and only travelled to the circus at night wearing veils. She had very few friends, although she did develop a rapport with the Viennese actress and singer Friederike Gossman, who later said that a “light fog of sadness” always hung over Julia. Nevertheless, Julia accepted Lent’s proposal. She once told Gossman, “[my husband] loves me for myself.”
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Aside from Gossman, one of the few who took Julia seriously as a person was German circus owner Hermann Otto. He visited Julia in Vienna and had a long conversation with her, later recording his impressions in his book Fahrend Volk (Travelling People). He wrote that Julia seemed: ‘a monster to the whole world, an abnormality put on display for money, someone who had been taught a few artistic turns, like a trained animal. [But] for the few who knew her better, she was a warm, feeling, thoughtful, spiritually very gifted being with a sensitive heart and mind… and it affected her very deeply in her heart with sadness, having to stand beside people, instead of with them, and to be shown as a freak for money, not sharing any of the everyday joys in a home filled with love.’
In the winter of 1859, the couple travelled to Moscow, where crowds flocked to their exhibition at the Circus Salomansky. That August, Julia discovered she was pregnant. The baby, which arrived in March 1860 after a difficult birth, was unusually large, covered in hair like his mother, and had the same pronounced lower facial features. Julia was said to have held him and cried.
The baby lived only thirty-five hours, and Julia, who had been lacerated with forceps during the birth, survived for just a few more days after that. The official cause of death was metroperitonitis puerperalis (inflammation of the peritoneum about the uterus), but more romantic sources say she died of a broken heart. Lent admitted spectators to her deathbed, where she is supposed to have said “I die happy, because I know I have been loved for my own sake.” This fits nicely into the nineteenth century predilection for grand last words, but it seems a little too perfect to be true. By impregnating his wife, Lent’s plan to secure his investment through marriage had backfired—or so it seemed. At the hospital where Julia gave birth, Lent met a Professor Sokolov of Moscow University. Sokolov was an expert on embalming, and had recently pioneered a technique that blended mummification with 42
taxidermy, creating corpses that still looked rosy and alive. He and Lent struck a deal, in which Sokolov would buy the bodies of Julia and her son, preserve them, and put them on display at the university’s Anatomical Institute. Sokolov kept the details of the embalming to himself, although we know the process took him six months. When the bodies were sufficiently infused withdecay-arresting chemicals, Sokolov posed both mother and childstanding up, the baby perched on a rod with an alert expression on his face, his mother standing with hands on her hips, feet wide apart, face turned to one side. The confident pose makes it possible to imagine Julia, just for a moment, as being like any self-possessed young woman standing on the corner waiting for a friend, a bus, a taxi, the end of the day to come.
But Julia had a far more unusual story. Her body stayed at the Anatomical Institute’s museum for only six months, before Lent, hearing how good she and her son looked, took advantage of an escape clause in his contract and returned to take them back. Evidently he realized that Julia could be a money-maker dead as well as alive. Lent put the bodies on display in London in 1862, where they could be seen for a shilling—less than he charged when Julia could sing and dance, but at least now he could display her for longer periods of time. Again the scientists weighed in: Buckland visited and said “the face was marvellous, exactly like an exceedingly good portrait in wax,” while The Lancet declared the embalming “completely successful.” The bodies went on to 43
tour, and when they visited Vienna, Hermann Otto described seeing his old acquaintance in a “red, silk-like harlot’s dress with a frightening rictus across her face.” A few years later in Karlsbad, Lent heard of another woman, Marie Bartel, who suffered from conditions similar to those of his late wife. (Today the official diagnosis for Julia’s maladies is generalized hypertrichosis lanuginosa, which produced the hair covering her face and body, and gingival hyperplasia, which thickened her lips and gums). Determined to add Marie to his show, Lent threw a bag of plums over a wall and into the garden where she spent her days. A little while later, he persuaded her father to let him marry her. He promised to never exhibit Marie, but the oath was short-lived. Soon she was singing and dancing onstage as “Zenora Pastrana,” Julia’s “little sister,” with the embalmed mummies of Julia and her son behind her for an added macabre touch. But perhaps “Zenora” had the last laugh. After further exhibitions throughout Europe and America, the pair retired in St. Petersburg, where Lent began to go insane. At least once, he showed up nearly naked on a bridge over the River Neva, shrieking incomprehensibly, tearing up bank notes and throwing them into the water. Marie had him committed to an asylum, where he died shortly thereafter. As for Marie, she moved back to Germany and sold the embalmed bodies of Julia and child, which then shuttled among fairs, amusement parks, museums, and chambers of horror throughout Europe for decades. In 1921, Haakon Lund, manager of Norway’s then-biggest carnival, purchased the bodies of Julia and her son from an American in Berlin. They arrived as part of a cabinet of curiosities 44
that held 8,000 other objects, including body parts submerged in giant glass jars, preserved heads, deformed fetuses, Siamese twin embryos, two-headed calves, an entire human skin nailed to a plank, and other choice items. Lund exhibited selections from the cabinet alongside a wax museum of venereal diseases, calling it the Hygienic and Anatomical Exhibition. The show toured through Norway in the 1920s with the slogan “Humanity, know thyself.” By then, however, the culture around exhibiting human oddities had started to change. As the nineteenth century progressed, “freak” exhibitions fell more and more out of favor, and Lund took pains to present his exhibition under the guise of popular education. He hired medical students wearing white lab coats to serve as guides, and displayed posters that at least gave the pretence of providing medical and scientific background information. However, during World War II the Nazis deemed the exhibit obscene, and ordered the wax models melted down for candles — an order which Lund managed to avoid.
After surviving the war, the bodies went into storage in the 1950s. By the 1970s, when the bodies emerged for small tours, they were frequently greeted by outrage in the newspapers. In 1973 Sweden banned their presence, saying corpses could no longer be exhibited for profit. This marked the end of their touring days, and Lund stashed the mummies in the carnival’s storehouse near Oslo. Three years later, teenagers broke in and ripped off Julia’s arm, thinking she was a mannequin. The police later recovered the bodies, but Julia’s infant was damaged beyond repair. He ended up in the trash.
Julia’s body re-emerged in the public consciousness in 1990, when journalists at the Norwegian magazine Kriminal Journalen discovered her languishing in the basement of Oslo’s Institute of Forensic Medicine. From then on, the fate of Julia’s body became a fixture of Norwegian newspaper reports and government committees. Journalists, academics, and other 45
officials spilled a great deal of ink debating the merits of burying her versus keeping her body above ground so that scientists might one day study her conditions. In the end, Norway’s Ministry of Church, Education and Research decided to keep the remains above ground, and they were moved to the Institute of Basic Medical Science at the University of Oslo in 1997. In 2005, Laura Anderson Barbata, a Mexico City-born, New Yorkbased visual artist then on a residency in Oslo, began petitioning the university for the repatriation of Julia’s body. Barbata had become aware of Julia’s plight two years earlier, after her sister produced a play called The True History of the Tragic Life and Triumphant Death of Julia Pastrana, the Ugliest Woman in the World, which is conducted entirely in the dark. While the initial replies from the university were disappointing, Barbata persisted, placing a death notice for Julia in an Oslo newspaper and arranging for a Catholic Mass to be said for her. In 2008, Barbata was allowed to make her case before Norway’s National Committee for the Evaluation of Research on Human Remains, which agreed that “it seems quite unlikely that Julia Pastrana would have wanted her body to remain a specimen in an anatomical collection.” The governor of Julia’s home province of Sinaloa got involved, as did the Mexican ambassador to Norway, and an official petition for Julia’s return to Mexico was lodged.
In February of 2013, Julia’s body—encased in a white coffin covered in white roses—was finally buried in a cemetery in Sinaloa de Leyva, a town near her birthplace. Despite all she endured, Julia’s story had something of a happy ending. It’s a pity she wasn’t alive to see it — and to know she was remembered as more than a monster. 46
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A Slander By Anton Chekov Illustrations:Norman Rockwell
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via www.etsy.com and www.signatureillustration.org/
SERGE KAPITONICH AHINEEV, the writing master, was marrying his daughter to the teacher of history and geography. The wedding festivities were going off most successfully. In the drawing room there was singing, playing, and dancing. Waiters hired from the club were flitting distractedly about the rooms, dressed in black swallowtails and dirty white ties. There was a continual hubub and din of conversation. Sitting side by side on the sofa, the teacher of mathematics, the French teacher, and the junior assessor of taxes were talking hurriedly and interrupting one another as they described to the guests cases of persons being buried alive, and gave their opinions on spiritualism. None of them believed in spiritualism, but all admitted that there were many things in this world which would always be beyond the mind of man. In the next room the literature master was explaining to the visitors the cases in which a sentry has the right to fire on passers-by. The subjects, as you perceive, were alarming, but very agreeable. Persons whose social position precluded them from entering were looking in at the windows from the yard. Just at midnight the master of the house went into the kitchen to see whether everything was ready for supper. The kitchen from floor to ceiling was filled with fumes composed of goose, duck, and many other odours. On two tables the accessories, the drinks and light refreshments, were set out in artistic disorder. The cook, Marfa, a red-faced woman whose figure was like a barrel with a belt around it, was bustling about the tables. "Show me the sturgeon, Marfa," said Ahineev, rubbing his hands and licking his lips. "What a perfume! I could eat up the whole kitchen. Come, show me the sturgeon." Marfa went up to one of the benches and cautiously lifted a piece of greasy newspaper. Under the paper on an immense dish there reposed a huge sturgeon, masked in jelly and decorated with capers, olives, and carrots. Ahineev gazed at the sturgeon and gasped. His face beamed, he turned his eyes up. He bent down and with his lips emitted the sound of an ungreased wheel. After standing a moment he snapped his fingers with delight and once more smacked his lips. 49
"Ah-ah! the sound of a passionate kiss. . . . Who is it you're kissing out there, little Marfa?" came a voice from the next room, and in the doorway there appeared the cropped head of the assistant usher, Vankin. "Who is it? A-a-h! . . . Delighted to meet you! Sergei Kapitonich! You're a fine grandfather, I must say!" "I'm not kissing," said Ahineev in confusion. "Who told you so, you fool? I was only . . . I smacked my lips . . . in reference to . . . as an indication of. . . pleasure . . . at the sight of the fish." "Tell that to the marines!" The intrusive face vanished, wearing a broad grin. Ahineev flushed. "Hang it!" he thought, "the beast will go now and talk scandal. He'll disgrace me to all the town, the brute." Ahineev went timidly into the drawing room and looked stealthily round for Vankin. Vankin was standing by the piano, and, bending down with a jaunty air, was whispering something to the inspector's sister-in-law, who was laughing. "Talking about me!" thought Ahineev. "About me, blast him! And she believes it . . . believes it! She laughs! Mercy on us! No, I can't let it pass . . . I can't. I must do something to prevent his being believed. . . . I'll speak to them all, and he'll be shown up for a fool and a gossip." Ahineev scratched his head, and still overcome embarrassment, went up to the French teacher. 50
with
"I've just been in the kitchen to see after the supper," he said to the Frenchman. "I know you are fond of fish, and I've a sturgeon, my dear fellow, beyond everything! A yard and a half long! Ha, ha, ha! And, by the way . . . I was just forgetting. . . . In the kitchen just now, with that sturgeon . . . quite a little story! I went into the kitchen just now and wanted to look at the supper dishes. I looked at the sturgeon and I smacked my lips with relish . . . at the piquancy of it. And at the very moment that fool Vankin came in and said: . . . 'Ha, ha, ha! . . . So you're kissing here!' Kissing Marfa, the cook! What a thing to imagine, silly fool! The woman is a perfect fright, like all the beasts put together, and he talks about kissing! Queer fish!"
"Who's a queer fish?" asked the mathematics teacher, coming up. "Why he, over there--Vankin! I went into the kitchen . . ." And he told the story of Vankin. ". . . He amused me, queer fish! I'd rather kiss a dog than Marfa, if you ask me," added Ahineev. He looked round and saw behind him the junior assessor of taxes. "We were talking of Vankin," he said. "Queer fish, he is! He went into the kitchen, saw me beside Marfa, and began inventing all sorts of silly stories. 'Why are you kissing?' he says. He must have had a drop too much. 'And I'd rather kiss a turkeycock than Marfa,' I said, 'And I've a wife of my own, you fool,' said I. He did amuse me!" 51
"Who amused you?" asked the priest who taught Scripture in the school, going up to Ahineev. "Vankin. I was standing in the kitchen, you know, looking at the sturgeon. . . ." And so on. Within half an hour or so all the guests knew the incident of the sturgeon and Vankin. "Let him tell away now!" thought Ahineev, rubbing his hands. "Let him! He'll begin telling his story and they'll say to him at once, 'Enough of your improbable nonsense, you fool, we know all about it!" And Ahineev was so relieved that in his joy he drank four glasses too many. After escorting the young people to their room, he went to bed and slept like an innocent babe, and next day he thought no more of the incident with the sturgeon. But, alas! man proposes, but God disposes. An evil tongue did its evil work, and Ahineev's strategy was of no avail. Just a week later--to be precise, on Wednesday after the third lesson--when Ahineev was standing in the middle of the teacher's room, holding forth on the vicious propensities of a boy called Visekin, the headmaster went up to him and drew him aside: "Look here, Sergei Kapitonich," said the headmaster, "you must excuse me. . . . It's not my business; but all the same I must make you realize. . . . It's my duty. You see, there are rumours that you are romancing with that . . . cook. . . . It's nothing to do with me, but . . . flirt with her, kiss her . . . as you please, but don't let it be so public, please. I entreat you! Don't forget that you're a schoolmaster."
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Ahineev turned cold and faint. He went home like a man stung by a whole swarm of bees, like a man scalded with boiling water. As he walked home, it seemed to him that the whole town was looking at him as though he were smeared with pitch. At home fresh trouble awaited him. "Why aren't you gobbling up your food as usual?" his wife asked him at dinner. "What are you so pensive about? Brooding over your amours? Pining for your Marfa? I know all about it, Mohammedan! Kind friends have opened my eyes! O-o-o! . . . you savage !" And she slapped him in the face. He got up from the table, not feeling the earth under his feet, and without his hat or coat, made his way to Vankin. He found him at home. "You scoundrel!" he addressed him. "Why have you covered me with mud before all the town? Why did you set this slander going about me?" "What slander? What are you talking about?" "Who was it gossiped of my kissing Marfa? Wasn't it you? Tell me that. Wasn't it you, you brigand?" Vankin blinked and twitched in every fibre of his battered countenance, raised his eyes to the icon and articulated, "God blast me! Strike me blind and lay me out, if I said a single word about you! May I be left without house and home, may I be stricken with worse than cholera!" Vankin's sincerity did not admit of doubt. It was evidently not he who was the author of the slander. "But who, then, who?" Ahineev wondered, going over all his acquaintances in his mind and beating himself on the breast. "Who, then?" 53
The poems of
Dorothy Parker
Sketches: http://www.sampaikini.com/ http://rootfun.net/ http://www.mobiletoones.com/ http://wallpaper4me.com/
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There's a place I know where the birds swing low, And wayward vines go roaming, Where the lilacs nod, and a marble god Is pale, in scented gloaming. And at sunset there comes a lady fair Whose eyes are deep with yearning. By an old, old gate does the lady wait Her own true love's returning.
But the days go by, and the lilacs die, And trembling birds seek cover; Yet the lady stands, with her long white hands Held out to greet her lover. And it's there she'll stay till the shadowy day A monument they grave her. She will always wait by the same old gate, — The gate her true love gave her.
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The ladies men admire, I’ve heard, Would shudder at a wicked word. Their candle gives a single light; They’d rather stay at home at night. They do not keep awake till three, Nor read erotic poetry. They never sanction the impure, Nor recognize an overture. They shrink from powders and from paints ... So far, I’ve had no complaints.
Razors pain you; Rivers are damp; Acids stain you; And drugs cause cramp. Guns aren’t lawful; Nooses give; Gas smells awful; You might as well live.
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When I am old, and comforted, And done with this desire, With Memory to share my bed And Peace to share my fire,
I'll comb my hair in scalloped bands Beneath my laundered cap, And watch my cool and fragile hands Lie light upon my lap.
And I will have a sprigged gown With lace to kiss my throat; I'll draw my curtain to the town, And hum a purring note.
And I'll forget the way of tears, And rock, and stir my tea. But oh, I wish those blessed years Were further than they be!
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Once, when I was young and true, Someone left me sadBroke my brittle heart in two; And that is very bad. Love is for unlucky folk, Love is but a curse. Once there was a heart I broke; And that, I think, is worse.
So silent I when Love was by He yawned, and turned away; But Sorrow clings to my apron-strings, I have so much to say. Into love and out again, Thus I went, and thus I go. Spare your voice, and hold your penWell and bitterly I know All the songs were ever sung, All the words were ever said; Could it be, when I was young, Some one dropped me on my head? 58
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This time around, we are including two cartoon strips that was published on Tuesday, 14th October 1904 and 23rd November 1904, under the series called “Dream of the rarebit fiend”. These cartoon strips were created by Zenas Winsor McCay (c. 1867–1871 – July 26, 1934), an American cartoonist and animator. He is best known for the comic strip Little Nemo (1905–1914; 1924–1926) and the animated film Gertie the Dinosaur (1914). For contractual reasons, he worked under the pen name Silas on the comic strip Dream of the Rarebit Fiend.
From a young age, McCay was a quick, prolific, and technically dextrous artist. He started his professional career making posters and performing for dime museums, and began illustrating newspapers and magazines in 1898. He joined the New York Herald in 1903, where he created popular comic strips such as Little Sammy Sneeze and Dream of the Rarebit Fiend. In 1905, his signature strip Little Nemo in Slumberland debuted, a fantasy strip in an Art Nouveau style, about a young boy and his adventurous dreams. The strip demonstrated McCay's strong graphic sense and mastery of colour and linear perspective. McCay experimented with the formal elements of the comic strip page, arranging and sizing panels to increase impact and enhance elements of the narrative. McCay also produced numerous detailed editorial cartoons and was a popular performer of chalk talks on the vaudeville circuit.
His comic strip work has influenced generations of cartoonists and illustrators.
Source: //en.wikipedia.org/
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Kriola Collective with Miriam Waks (NYC) Saturday
31
January:
Continue the Sydney Festival Brazilian summer with some Samba Funk grooves at 505.
A unique 10 piece band, 'Kriola Collective' features some of Sydney's best musicians playing a snapshot of the 1970's Black Rio Samba, Soul and Funk movement in Brazil. The band's repertoire includes a classic mix of groovy Brazilian beats, Funk, Soul, Samba and Bossa Jazz, from the Carnival capitol of Rio. Stemming from the well known 'I like it like that Orchestra', 'Kriola Collective' will conquer the dance floor with an explosive set of Brazilian infused Soul, Funk and brassy Samba from well known Brazilian artists such as Jorge Ben, Seu Jorge, Banda Black Rio, Tim Maia, Di Melo, Bebeto and Joao Donato. Special guests for the night will be percussionist Giorgio Rojas and vocalist Miriam Waks. Bookings close at 4pm on the day. Tickets may be purchased at the door subject to availability. No refunds or exchanges DOORS OPEN AT 6pm for cocktail hour, dining and best seating. (90% seated, 10% standing) Two sets until 11.30 pm (approximate) 505 reserves the right to sell unredeemed tickets after show time VENUE: Venue 505 280 Cleveland Street Surry Hills Sydney, NSW 2010 CONTACT DETAILS: c20dog@me.com
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The Mind Creative www.themindcreative.com.au themindcreative@gmail.com www.facebook.com/TheMindCreative www.pinterest.com/themindcreative
All original works used in this magazine are for educational purposes and for viewing by readers. These works are not, in any way, to be used for commercial reasons or for profit. 65