Empires, Cannibals, and Magic Fish Bones
Join us as we celebrate food, the dinner table, and quite likely empires, cannibals and magic fish bones!
We’re set floating in this light on midsummer day’s eve. The Baltic’s still, now that its been channeled around one island after another, though the surface slightly bends like a plate of glass heated and slowly turning in and out of itself. Think of a mirror dulled with age reflecting a dusted blue sky ringed … Continue reading Storön–Vignettes From The Big Island.
Gustav Klimt‘s painting Garden Path with Chickens from 1916 no longer exists. Hasn’t for awhile. Thirteen of his paintings stored in Schloss Immendorf castle in Lower Austria during World War II were destroyed by retreating German forces who set off explosives. Only a photographic reproduction of the work allows us to view it today. Gustav Klimt’s … Continue reading Chicken Soup For A Friend Who’s Fallen Ill.
After a forty-five minute bus ride out of Stockholm, the road ends at Stavsnäs with a pier jutting out into the water, pointing toward an archipelago, a labyrinth of islands we’ll navigate on our way to a greeting and hospitality. This is Tomas Tranströmer’s realm as translated into another island language by Robin Fulton, a place of sky … Continue reading There’s An Island In The Baltic Sea
The Butcher Shop, an oil on canvas painting by Annibale Carracci, early 1580’s. Two figures two butchers. The man on the left looks at a knife he draws out of its sheath at his waist; the man on the right looks at us as he presents a cut of meat. Red hues dominate the painting … Continue reading For The Love Of A Beef Shank
Our collective human memory reaches far back through many doors, many hallways and rooms, and alway we find, though never that first room, a place to cook and a place to sit down and eat with each other. In Homer’s the Odyssey, Odysseus portrays this action and place as the best life has to offer. … Continue reading Happy July 4th! Some Thoughts on Cannibalism For North Carolina.
A moment of hospitality in Django Unchained . . . until the raw ugliness of slavery appears again and all hell breaks loose. Slaves weave in and out, a mouth articulates racist physiognomy and all around plentiful, elaborate food. This fictional scene echoes history, voices letters from the past. In Culinary Conversations of The Plantation … Continue reading Southern Hospitality: Then And Now
It’s a dinner party. Wine passed down the table. Angels have appeared at Abraham and Sarah’s door, and as good hosts the old couple provide food and drink. And the LORD appeared unto him by the terebinths of Mamre, as he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day; and he lifted … Continue reading Night Thoughts For North Carolina
The first thing you notice about Pieter Aretsen’s painting A Meat Stall With The Holy Family Giving Alms (1551) is all the meat–an ox head with eyes staring at us, pig trotters on a cabbage leaf, whole side of a slaughtered pig split cleanly down the spine, a large ham shank, sausage, smoked fish, herring; … Continue reading Thinking About Who’s Sitting Down To Dinner In North Carolina
Looking through the ground-breaking, original four-volume series The Image of the Black in Western Art, the myriad of interpretive decisions highlight problems and struggles with the representation of people of African descent in Western art. A project started by John and Dominique de Menil in the 1960’s as a response to segregation in America, the … Continue reading Further Thoughts Toward A Lecture In North Carolina: Lowcountry Seafood Boil.
The old stories tell of a bride . . . and then a war, and as always, banquet after banquet. Remember Helen? Daughter of Zeus and Leda. In this Peter Paul Rubens’ version (there are two) Leda and the Swan (aka Zeus) may share a kiss or you could also interpret that she’s asleep, either … Continue reading Thoughts Toward A Lecture In North Carolina: A Swan, Bride, And Fatal Banquet.
