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  • An Archipelago of Grief: Vanished, The Sixty-Year Search for the Missing Men of World War II

    Rock Islands of Palau

     Rock-Islands,  Palau by Peter R. Binter, 2007; Wikipedia

    Vanished: The Sixty-Year Search for the Missing Men of World War II

    By Wil S. Hylton

    Published by Riverhead Books, the Penguin Group

    ©2013, 272 pages including bibliography and notes

     

     I just came around that bend in the coral and I was a different person.

    — Pat Scannon

    Pat Scannon is  medical researcher with an MD, a PhD in chemistry,  and founder of a biotech corporation named Xoma who initially went to Palau as part of a treasure-seeking scuba trip with  an interest in finding the first combat kill of Present George H. W. Bush. But it was the location of the missing B-24 bomber that went down with a crew of eleven on September 1, 1944 that held Scannon’s efforts of nearly two decades and forms the focus of Vanished.

    The following are quotes from Hylton’s fascinating and riveting mystery of the whereabouts of the WWII bomber and its crew, known as the Big Stoop. We cannot help but compare it to the present search for the Malaysia Boeing 370 that has been missing since the March 8th departure from Kuala Lumpur on a flight to Beijing.  The quotes from Vanished are reactions from family members  after the B-24 crew are classified as MIAs.

    . . .

    Tommy Doyle was told by his mother that “his daddy’s plane went down in the Pacific Ocean, some patch of islands called Palau. The crew was never found.” Tommy was not supposed to hear, as a kid,  another story about his missing father: “He’d survived the crash. He’d come back from the war. He was living in California with a new wife and two daughters. He just didn’t care about Tommy anymore.”

    . . .

    “Secretly Diane [Goulding] had a nagging feeling that Ted wasn’t really gone. It was crazy, she knew, but there it was. Some combination of instinct and faith told her that he was alive. Lost, maybe or captured, or sick, or perhaps it was amnesia. Over the next three decades, she followed every scrap of news from the Pacific for a sign of Ted. Each time a Japanese soldier emerged from a jungle hideaway in the 1950s and ’60s, she would picture Ted coming out from his own cave one day, or released from his captors, and part of her grieved at the thought that he might be in trouble, while another part smiled at the thought of him coming home.”

    . . .

    “Back in Arkansas, Johnny’s [Moore] sister Melba moved in with their parents. Her mother had called in desperation,  say, Melba, your dad’s gone crazy,’ and when Melba arrived at the house she found John Senior in a catatonic state, crouched up in his chair as if bracing for impact. After eighteen years of fishing and hunting with Johnny, the thought of a lifetime without his son was too much to bear.”

    . . .

    “In the South Pacific, Jack Arnett’s brother Marvin struggled with the news. He was a pilot like Jack, but in the Navy’s Air Transport Service, flying a route between island bases. One day, on a flight through the Caroline Islands, he made a detour over Palau, swooping low to look down for a sign of Jack on the islands. Crazy, he thought. But he couldn’t help it. A few weeks later, he did it again. Then Marvin Arnett was making detours all the time.”

    . . .

    Quotes from Vanished: The Sixty-Year Search for the Missing Men of World War II by Wil Hylton. Copyright 2013 by Wil Hylton.

    ©2014 Tam Martinides Gray for SeniorWomen.com

  • Underwater on a Hunt For History of the Roman Empire

    Underwater Roman Empire
    Maritime archeologist Justin Leidwanger maps the cargo of a Roman shipwreck at Marzamemi, Italy. Photo by S. Emma

    By Tom Winterbottom

    Stanford scholar Justin Leidwanger spends a lot of time underwater.

    An assistant professor of classics, Leidwanger is a maritime archeologist. His research entails what it sounds like it would – exploring artifacts that lie beneath the sea.

    A scholar with interests in the Roman and early Byzantine eras, Leidwanger has conducted thousands of dives – mostly to explore shipwrecks of the Eastern Mediterranean region. His students, too, don snorkels or scuba gear and work underwater.

    Marine archeology, Leidwanger says, provides a privileged perspective on ancient history.

    “There is a lot of theoretical work on the maritime economy of the Roman Empire, but I am interested in the close details of sea travel and how archeological finds can shed light on the history of consumption and connectivity around the Mediterranean,” said Leidwanger.

    The social networks established by sea travel, Leidwanger says, were the basis of commerce during the Roman Empire, and in the shipwrecks and harbors he is able to see evidence of “who was interacting with whom and how and when these objects were being transported and for what reason.”

    Leidwanger’s aim is to bring together the theoretical models of ancient economics and socioeconomic connectivity with hard data from his underwater fieldwork.

    “The Roman Empire was the most complex state structure at the time with a lot of movement of goods and people through the landscape,” Leidwanger said. “I am interested in how these structures and social networks change over the life of the Roman Empire.”

    He is currently engaged in two projects, the Marzamemi Maritime Heritage Project in Sicily and the Burgaz Harbors Project in Turkey.

    “Sicily was a nexus of communication and commerce between the eastern and western Roman Mediterranean. In the shipwrecks there, we are finding evidence of the changing patterns of commerce when the capital moved from Rome to Constantinople in the 4thcentury A.D.,” Leidwanger notes.

    In Turkey, archeologists are currently excavating four shallow-water harbors to get a picture of what the harbor structures were like. In the 4th century B.C., during the late Classical period, Burgaz became a regional and international economic center for the export of agricultural goods.

    “We are finding evidence of how these integral structures changed over time,” Leidwanger says.

    Uncovering history in the mare nostrum

    The location of Leidwanger’s current research is key to uncovering archeological data about the importance of the Mediterranean Sea for the Romans.

    “The Mediterranean Sea has been described as an ‘inverted continent,’ a zone of human culture and relationships centered on the sea rather than land, a product of geography that led me to focus on the maritime,” Leidwanger said.

    To undertake his research, Leidwanger maps and excavates marine sites to understand what was being transported and when.

    At sites in Sicily or Turkey, where he travels each summer with Stanford students, Leidwanger excavates harbors and shipwrecks that often contain well-preserved artifacts that he can analyze in the lab.

  • Chris Payne’s Photographic Essay, Textiles: Made In America

    Chris Payne's Textiles

    Wool Carders, S & D Spinning Mill, Millbury, Maine, Bonni Benrubi Gallery
    Photographed and with text by Christopher Payne

    Historically, the textile industry has been a driving force behind the United States economy, but several decades of overseas competition, unequal trade policies, and a flood of cheaper imports have decimated American factories. Since 1990, job losses in apparel and textile manufacturing have been greater than those in any other type of manufacturing.

    In 2010, I stumbled upon an old yarn mill in Maine, filled with vintage machinery, that reminded me of the state hospital workshops I had photographed for my book, Asylum. While those workshops had long been abandoned, this textile mill was fully operational, a scene from the past miraculously coexisting with the present. I returned to the mill several times to take pictures, and from conversations with employees, learned of other mills in New England, still functioning as they had for decades, using anachronistic techniques and equipment.

    When I ventured down South, where the textile industry eventually migrated because of less costly labor, I found a different scene entirely: enormous mill complexes that were clean, efficient, and largely automated. Here the industry still thrives, albeit at a fraction of the volume it once produced, largely  because the remaining factories have modernized in order to stay competitive in a global marketplace. Though they are bound by a common history to their Northern forebears, there is little resemblance otherwise.

    My goal for this project is to document what remains of the textile industry in the North and South, by bridging the past with the present to show how it has changed, and what its future may hold.

    I also hope to pay tribute to the undervalued segment of Americans workers who labor in this manufacturing sector. They are a cross section of young and old, skilled and unskilled, recent immigrants and veteran employees, some of whom have spent their entire working lives in a single factory. Together, they share a quiet pride and dignity, and are proof that manual labor and craftsmanship still have value in the 21st century US economy.

    Available spring 2014: 

  • Ferida Wolff’s Backyard: Winter is Getting Warmer – Really & The Beauty of the Unexpected

     

    Winter Is Getting Warmer – Reallyfountain

     
    Even though we officially have to wait until March 20th there is evidence of Spring all over. New leaves are sprouting on my azaleas. The lilac bushes have impatient buds on all the branches. I see robins hopping around the neighborhood pecking at the saturated ground for worms. Clumps of ice are slowly melting, revealing things that have been hidden for months. Practically everyone I know says the same thing: I’m ready for winter to be over.
     
    We aren’t the only ones yearning for Spring. Ducks have had it hard this year. They migrate to find food and nesting places, both of which become difficult to find when there is an excess of snow and ice. The robins that have returned, until this week, were pecking away at the snow, trying to get underneath to find food. Geese were spotted making nests on mounds of snow and skidding on the underlying ice. It has been some winter.
     
    And yet, the earth has had a warm year. In some areas, it has been an unseasonably warm winter. The earth has been setting records in the past dozen years. As temperatures rise, ice melts.  Polar bears are losing their ice environment. Islands have flooded. The oceans have risen. It is a self-perpetuating cycle: as temperatures rise, carbon dioxide increases and as CO2 increases, temperatures rise. It’s a complicated situation to understand, especially after an extended period of snow. So I went to NASA’s website for kids to help make sense of it all: http://climatekids.nasa.gov/climate-change-evidence/
     
    I wonder if the definition of our seasons will be changing in the future and what is our part in that change? It’s not something to sluff off because it isn’t only the ducks and geese and polar bears that are affected, it’s us, too. 
     
    Some late-season weather statistics:
     
    Waterfowl react to seasonal changes, too:
     
    Editor’s Note: We used the Farmer’s Almanac when planning our middle daughter’s June outdoor wedding reception: the weather was spectacular. Canadian regions are also covered. Although the United Kingdom and Europe do not have an equivalent to the Farmer’s Almanac in terms of long range prediction, Netweather, using information from the Climate Forecast System from the NCEP (USA), run out to 9 months in advance  updated once a month.
     
    Another United Kingdom choice would be the Weather Underground. The United States Climate Prediction Center Long-Lead Forecast Release Schedule can be found at:
    http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/predictions/schedule.html

  • Interview: How You Can Help Find an MIA

    by Megan McCloskey* Cabanatuan POWs
    ProPublica

    Former Cabanatuan POWs celebrate after successful raid on prison camp in the Philippines; 30 January 1945. US Army Photo, Wikimedia Commons

    There are 45,000 service members missing in action from World War II and other wars who experts say are recoverable. But the Pentagon’s $100 million per year effort to identify them has solved surprisingly few cases – 60 MIAs were sent home last year.

    The military actually knows where many of the missing are: 9,400 service members are buried as “unknowns” in American cemeteries around the world. Armed with family stories and documents, John Eakin may have tracked down the remains of one of those men, Bud Kelder, a cousin who died in a World War II POW camp.

     Here, in an edited interview, Eakin shares what he’s learned about researching a loved one “missing in action,” and fighting against the Pentagon.

    What if someone doesn’t know much about their relative’s death?

    That was the case with me in the beginning.  In 2009, I didn’t set out to recover the remains of my cousin. I was simply looking for genealogical information on the date and place of his death.  About all that I knew about him was that he had been in the Bataan Death March and his remains were never returned to his family for burial.  Growing up, it was one of those things that I was told never to ask about because it upset my grandparents.

    A good starting point is the MIA database on the website of the Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO).

    What’s next for more information? Can a family member get any files about their missing loved one?

    The first thing any family member should do is request the Individual Deceased Personnel File for their family member. The IDPF is the key document in any MIA research. These files were classified and restricted from public access for many years, but are available now. 

    An IDPF contains all that is known about a serviceman’s death and efforts to identify his remains. It typically includes death certificates, notifications of death, disposition of personnel property, information on burial, and often ends with the paperwork involved in providing a veterans headstone. The IDPF will often direct further investigation.  It took over three months for the Army to retrieve Bud’s IDPF from the archives, but it was worth the wait as it was the key to the whole case.

    Bud’s IDPF also contained several letters from Bud’s parents to the Army asking that his remains be returned for burial.  Their grief at not being able to bury their son was almost palpable.

    Family members can obtain the IDPF from the appropriate Service Casualty Office. (It is important to know that the Air Force didn’t come in to being until 1947 and missing personnel from the old Army Air Corps are handled by the Army Casualty Office.)

    US Army (and the Air Corps)
    Department of the Army
    Casualty and Mortuary Affairs Operations Center
    1600 Spearhead Div Ave, Dept 450
    Fort Knox, KY 40122-5405

    Tel: 1 (800) 892-2490
    Website

    US Marine Corps
    Headquarters U.S. Marine Corps
    Manpower and Reserve Affairs (MRC)
    Personal and Family Readiness Division
    3280 Russell Road
    Quantico, VA 22134-5103

    Tel: 1 (800) 847-1597
    Website

    U.S. Navy
    Navy Personnel Command
    Casualty Assistance Division (OPNAV N135C)
    5720 Integrity Drive
    Millington, TN 38055-6210

    Tel:1 (800) 443-9298
    Website

  • Private Lives: Stanford Graduate Students Show Phone Record Surveillance Can Yield Significant Information

    March 12, 2014National Security Agency Sign

    Stanford computer students Jonathan Mayer and Patrick Mutchler examined phone records to learn what the NSA can find out through surveillance. (National Security Agency)

    Two computer science graduate students have found that the NSA’s mass collection of phone records can yield much more information about people’s private lives than the US government claims. New research shows how “metadata” surveillance can be used to identify information about callers including medical conditions, financial and legal connections, and even whether they own a gun.

    By Clifton B. Parker

    The National Security Agency’s mass surveillance of telephone metadata could yield detailed information about the private lives of individuals far beyond what the federal government claims, according to new Stanford research.

    Two Stanford computer science students were able to acquire detailed information about people’s lives just from telephone metadata — the phone number of the caller and recipient, the particular serial number of the phones involved, the time and duration of calls and possibly the location of each person when the call occurred.

    The researchers did not do any illegal snooping — they worked with the phone records of 546 volunteers, matching phone numbers against the public Yelp and Google Places directories to see who was being called.

    From the phone numbers, it was possible to determine that 57 percent of the volunteers made at least one medical call. Forty percent made a call related to financial services.

    The volunteers called 33,688 unique numbers; 6,107 of those numbers, or 18 percent, were isolated to a particular identity.

    Privacy issues

    The metadata issue has taken on urgency in the wake of last summer’s revelations about surveillance of American citizens by the NSA. Privacy experts have questioned the federal government’s assertions on the subject.

    President Obama has said, “They are not looking at people’s names, and they’re not looking at content.”

    Federal judges have split on the legality of the NSA’s telephone metadata program.

    Computer scientists like Stanford’s Jonathan Mayer say that metadata are extremely sensitive and revealing.

    Mayer is a doctoral student in computer science and a cybersecurity fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. His co-author on the research paper is Patrick Mutchler, also a doctoral student in computer science at Stanford. Their faculty adviser is John C. Mitchell, a computer science professor.

    They contend their research shows that metadata from phone calls can yield a wealth of detail about family, political, professional, religious and sexual associations.

    “It would be no technical challenge to scale these identifications to a larger population,” said Mayer.

    At the outset, Mayer said, they asked, “Is it easy to draw sensitive inferences from phone metadata? How often do people conduct sensitive matters by phone? We turned to our crowdsourced MetaPhone dataset for empirical answers.”

    They crowdsourced the data using an Android application and conducted an analysis of individual calls made by the volunteers to sensitive numbers, connecting the patterns of calls to emphasize the detail available in telephone metadata, Mayer said.

    “A pattern of calls will, of course, reveal more than individual call records,” he said. “In our analysis, we identified a number of patterns that were highly indicative of sensitive activities or traits.”

    For example, one participant called several local neurology groups, a specialty pharmacy, a rare-condition management service, and a pharmaceutical hotline used for multiple sclerosis.

    Another contacted a home improvement store, locksmiths, a hydroponics dealer and a head shop.

    ‘Unambiguously sensitive’

    The researchers initially shared the same hypothesis as their computer science colleagues, Mayer said. They did not anticipate finding much evidence one way or the other.

    “We were wrong. Phone metadata is unambiguously sensitive, even over a small sample and short time window. We were able to infer medical conditions, firearm ownership and more, using solely phone metadata,” he said.

    All three branches of the federal government are now considering curbs on access to telephone metadata, Mayer noted. Consumer privacy concerns are also salient as the Federal Communications Commission assesses telecom data sharing practices, he added.

  • Elaine Soloway’s Caregiving Series: How To Suction A Tracheotomy

    Elaine's HOw to Suction a Tracheotomy  

    My last blog post was Sept. 18, two days before I was to undergo a total hip replacement. That was a lifetime ago.

    Today, more than a month later, my hip is nearly repaired and I am back to driving and usual activities. Sadly, tragically, those activities now include caring for my husband at home, with hospice and caregivers as support.

    We have been through an unbelievable nightmare, with my dear Tommy suffering more than anyone else. It all started with swallowing. For several months he had to be reminded to chew one mouthful before taking another. Then, that routine started to deteriorate until he could not swallow anything. Sips of water or Gatorade were taken in, then spat out.

    Dehydration was a worry. One evening, when I was already upstairs, I heard a thump. I ran down and at the foot of the stairs was my husband, awake, unhurt, but seeming to wonder what happened to him.

    The following morning, Stuart — a CNA (Certified Nursing Assistant) who had been driving Tommy to the YMCA several days a week — and I took him to Northwestern’s ER. He was admitted with severe dehydration. Because Tommy could not swallow — which we all assumed was a symptom of his Primary Progressive Aphasia — the ENT team recommended a tracheotomy (lest he smother) and a feeding tube for nourishment.

    This is the part where the nightmare become so dark and frightening that we pray it is indeed something happening in our sleep. But, it was not to be; it continued when awake. When the ENT team attempted to insert a tube through his mouth to his stomach, they encountered a blockage, a mass. Doctor’s diagnosis: “Squamous cell carcinoma of supraglottis. You are not a candidate for treatment for this cancer.” Throat cancer. Aggressive.

    Our decision was to bring him home to hospice care where he can be kept as comfortable as possible.

    After 10 days in the hospital, on Oct. 21 we returned via ambulance to our house in Independence Park. Several neighbors had already been on board to assist with equipment delivery and to get Tommy all set up in our bedroom. Other neighbors wrote their phone numbers on slips of papers with the words, “anytime, 24 hours.”

    Now, my husband is hooked up to balky machines that provide oxygen and humidity with a tube that goes directly into his tracheotomy. Every few hours, he will cough, alerting me and a CNA, Rebecca, or other round-the-clock caregivers, that his trach is accumulating mucous and secretions and making it difficult for him to breathe. That’s where the suctioning comes in. I watched the hospital nurses perform the procedure, studied a YouTube video, assisted Rebecca on her first suction, and then, miraculously did the cleanse, insert, twist, suction, and extraction on my own.

    Of course, the big question is did his brain degeneration and aphasia cause the swallowing problem, or the throat cancer? The physicians say it could be a combination of both illnesses. Does it matter?

    All that is important now, is keeping Tommy comfortable, peaceful, and pain-free. He is home, in his own bedroom. That’s all I can ask for now.

    ©2014 Elaine Soloway for SeniorWomen.com

  • One Swedish Solution to the Pay Gap: Be a Man

    be a man

    Sweden is considered one of the most equal countries in the world. However, the gap between men and women’s salaries has hardly changed at all for the past thirty years. At the current pace, it will take more than a century to reach equal pay. To protest against this, Annelie Nordström, President of Sweden’s largest trade union Kommunal, temporarily became a man. The action was taken to inspire women across the globe to join her in the campaign Be a Man. The international initiative aims to become the world’s largest protest against unequal pay, which started on The International Women’s Day, March 8th.

    When it comes to wages, Sweden is among the world’s most equal countries. According to The Global Gender Gap Report, published by the World Economic Forum, the country is placed fourth, globally*. However, at the current pace, it will take more than a century before men and women earn the same amount of money for the same work**.

    “It’s sad that Sweden is considered to be a global example of equal pay, given how far we have left to go. Therefore we want to do something on a global scale to improve the situation for women everywhere”, says Annelie Nordström, President of Kommunal.

    The campaign Be a Man highlights the absurd fact that the easiest way for a woman to get a raise is to become a man. By using either a smartphone app or visiting www.BEaMAN.se, women from around the globe can create a male version of any photo of themselves. The image is then shared in social media on The International Women’s Day, creating the largest protest against inequality ever.

    Deconstructing the myth of “Equal Sweden”
    In Sweden, women were first allowed to vote in 1919. Almost 100 years later, the wage gap is still significant. Swedish men earn $682 more per month than women, or $10,8 billion per year. Measured in time, men only need to work until 3:52 PM, whilst a woman has to work until 5 PM to earn the same amount. Swedish women earn only 82 % of what the nation’s men do***.

    “The most comprehensive example is when you compare a nurse to a mechanic. For some reason, we as a society value the people who take care of our cars higher than the ones that tend to our children or our elderly parents”, Annelie Nordström continues.

    The differences between men and women are currently very obvious — and very little is indicating a change. In fact, according to recent statistics, it will take more than 100 years before the nation will attain equal pay.

    Links
    The film where Annelie becomes a man: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I08p24i9VuI

    Sources
    *: World Economic Forum (2013) The Global Gender Gap Report 2013 http://templatelab.com/global-gender-gap-report/
    **:Medlingsinstitutet (2012) Rapporten om löneskillnaderna 2012
    http://www.mi.se/files/PDF-er/att_bestalla/loneskillnader/skillnaden12.pdf
    ***: Kommunal (2013) Byt Lön
    http://www.kommunal.se/PageFiles/160099/Byt%20L%C3%B6n%20-%20dags%20f%C3%B6r%20j%C3%A4mst%C3%A4llda%20l%C3%B6ner%20.pdf

     

    Editor’s Note:

    Djurgården, Stockholm

    Regardless of the status of pay equality, Sweden is a country of innovative social measures for its people. Sweden’s official site regarding gender equality can be consulted for their policy and statistics.

    Pension System:

    All Swedish citizens are entitled to a pension after they retire. People can choose to start receiving their pension between the ages of 61 and 67.

    From 2005 to 2011, the number of working Swedes aged 65–74 increased by 49 per cent. The average retirement age today is 64. In Sweden, the average age up to which people feel they will be capable of working in their current job is 64.4 years, the highest in the EU.

    There are several different sources that make up a Swedish pension. People who have worked and lived in Sweden will get a national retirement pension based on the income on which they have paid tax. The national retirement pension consists of income pension, premium pension and guarantee pension.

    The average national retirement pension in 2012 was Swedish Kroner (SEK)  11,428 per month. Using current conversion rates, that amounts to $1,793.77 US dollars.  In addition to the national retirement pension, most people employed in Sweden also get an occupational pension, based on contributions made by their employers.

    Altogether, 65 per cent of pensioners’ total income derives from the public pension system. For added security, many choose to supplement their retirement benefits with private pension savings.

    Parental Leave:

    Eighty-one per cent of all children have a mother who goes out to work, and 92 per cent have fathers with jobs. Each set of parents gets 480 days of paid parental leave per child, which must be claimed before the child turns eight. Most parental leave is taken by mothers, but fathers are spending an increasing amount of time at home with their children. Men now claim about 24 per cent of all parental leave taken.

  • Modern Nature: Georgia O’Keeffe and Lake George, The Spirit of Place

    The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco present Modern Nature: Georgia O’Keeffe and Lake George, organized by The Hyde Collection in association with the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. The exhibition, which began its exclusive West Coast presentation at the de Young on February 15 is the first major exhibition to examine the body of work that Georgia O’Keeffe (1887‒1986) created based on her experiences at Lake George.  The exhibit is scheduled to end on May 11, 2014.Trees in Autumn

    Georgia O’Keeffe, Trees in Autumn, 1920/1921. Oil on canvas, 25 1/4 x 20 1/4 (64.1 x 51.4) Georgia O’Keeffe Museum Gift of The Burnett Foundation (1997.06.012) © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

    From 1918 until 1934, O’Keeffe lived for part of each year at the family estate of Alfred Stieglitz (1864‒1946) on Lake George in New York’s Adirondack Park. The 36-acre property, situated near Lake George Village along the western shoreline, served as a rural retreat for the artist, providing the subject matter for much of her art, and inspiring the spirit of place that she continually evoked in her works from this era, an essential aspect to her evolving modern approach to depicting the natural world. During this highly productive period she created more than 200 paintings on canvas and paper in addition to sketches and pastels, making her Lake George years among the most prolific and transformative of her seven-decade career. This period coincided with O’Keeffe’s first critical and popular acclaim as a professional artist, helped define her personal style, and affirmed her passion for natural subject matter prior to her well-known move to the Southwest.Storm Cloud

    Georgia O’Keeffe, Storm Cloud, Lake George, 1923. Oil on canvas, 18 x 30 1/8 (45.7 x 76.5) Georgia O’Keeffe Museum Gift of The Burnett Foundation (2007.01.018) © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

    Colin B. Bailey, director of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco noted, “It is especially gratifying to host this pioneering and scholarly exhibition of Georgia O’Keeffe’s Lake George ‒ period works, as the artist’s Petunias [1925], featured in the exhibition, is a highlight of our renowned collection of modernist works by artists associated with the Stieglitz circle.”

    “It is surprising to me how many people separate the objective from the abstract. Objective painting is not good painting unless it is good in the abstract sense. A hill or a tree cannot make a good painting just because it is a hill or a tree. It is lines and colors put together so that they say something. For me that is the very basis of painting. The abstracted is often the most definite form for the intangible thing in myself that I can only clarify in paint.’”

    — Georgia O’Keeffe

  • An Unsung Heroine of Downton Abbey: Isis

    Editor’s Note: In case you missed the spotlight on the particular pet of Downton Abbey, Isis, we thought we should provide the Masterpiece Theater feature that, we had not seen. We were glad to see that into the season, she reappeared as the flag-bearer and lead actor, so to speak, when the castle appeared ahead. Isis is considered one of the most important goddesses of ancient Egypt. Her name is the Greek form of an ancient Egyptian word for ‘throne.’

    Clever Isis: Her behind is the ahead, so to speak, welcoming viewers to Downton Abbey with her spirited, tail-wagging trot toward the great house. After three seasons of Downton Abbey, it’s time to put the loyal and lovable lab in the spotlight, celebrating her aristocratic qualities and her very best moments.

    Isis in Downton Abbey's credits

    Downton Abbie

    In Season 1, the Crawley family dog was Pharaoh, played by a yellow Labrador retriever named Roly. When Roly died in the second season, Ellie joined the family as Isis, but has since been replaced by a wonderful lab, conveniently named … Abbie!

    Downton Abbey's Isis

    Crêpe Expectations

    In Season 2, Isis was Mrs. Patmore’s eager accomplice in putting housemaid Ethel in her place. When Mrs. Patmore slopped the leftover Crêpes Suzette to the floor rather than give them to the entitled housemaid, Isis gobbled them up with aristocratic brio.

    Downton Abbey's Isis

    Stockhound Syndrome

    With Stockholm Syndrome, kidnapping victims develop positive feelings for their captors. But Isis – kidnapped by Thomas and locked in a shed until the temporary valet could return the dog to Robert, securing his favor — proved her case of Stockhound Syndrome, foiling Thomas by engineering her own escape and safe return to her master.

    Downton Abbey's Isis

    On Point

    As part of the shooting party in in the Season 2 finale, Isis had the good breeding and restraint to attend to the pheasants rather than delivering a much-deserved punishing bite to the bullying Sir Richard Carlisle.

    Downton Abbey's Isis

    Belle of the Ballroom

    No wallflower she, Isis occupies the seat of power — proximity to the fireplace – during the Jack Ross Orchestra’s performance at Downton Abbey. As dancers and drama may twirl around her, she remains the true belle of the ballroom.

    Downton Abbey's Isis

    Lab of Leisure

    From the garden party to the church bazaar, no sprawling estate lawn is complete without the requisite retriever. Isis fills the role with panache. Noble and nimble, loyal and playful, she loves the earl, but she heels at the feet of the Dowager.

    Downton Abbey's Isis

    Man’s Best Friend

    When a man is burdened by sorrows and insecurities, he is never truly alone in the world when he has a dog. Fans can only hope that Branson, as Isis’ de facto pet sitter, can find enough company and comfort in her presence to avoid seeking it from unworthy alternatives!

    Downton Abbey's Isis

    Earl’s Best Girl

    Robert is surrounded by women, but the least complicated and demanding of them all is Isis. She won’t disappoint, she won’t have to marry, and she doesn’t need to know about his financial foibles. She remains simply and unquestioningly loyal to her master.

    Downton Abbey's Isis

    Courtesy of Masterpiece Theater, PBS.org

    http://video.pbs.org/widget/partnerplayer/2365187535/?w=680&h=383&chapterbar=true&autoplay=true#0