Pages and Screens

Besides the NY Times, TV, CNN, MSNBC, WNET, multiple websites like Axios, and Huffington Post, google, I have been reading books.  You know that informational site that tries to bring you the world that's been observed over the course of years rather than 24 hours. 
I am reading 'The Cave and The Light, Plato Versus Aristotle and the Struggle for the Soul of Western Civilization' by Arthur Herman. 
The book is very much a reflection of the title: 570 pages, with chapters like 'Christ has come: Plato and Christianity', and its following chapter 'Aristotle Strikes Back'. 
On Plato ' for every quality in life - goodness, justice, ... there has to exist a single standard.'  That standard is referred to as the 'form' by which we judge 'all individual instances - which are only pale, dim copies, like shadows in a cave.'  The form exists and is possible because of 'Plato's God'.  That is the world exists in it's perfect form elsewhere through the work of the 'unknown'. 
For Aristotle: ' We must trust the evidence of the senses rather than theories, and theories as well as long as their results agree with what is observed. ... Reason steps in after experience not before, it sorts out observations into meaningful patterns and arrives at a knowledge as certain and as exact as Plato's Forms.  Aristotle's term for this knowledge is 'episteme', which Latin commentators translated as scentia or science.
I'm on page 45.

Quiet Time

Taking a break from the medical & political pandemics, the 24 hour news cycle, the theories, conspiracies, the he said, he didn't say, he did, he didn't do, world, for quiet.  You'd think I'd find something else of interest, as important, timely? 

Well there's this: 

'Cocktails with Curators' on youtube by and at The Frick.  The last one was Holbein's portrait of Thomas More which is hung juxtaposed to Holbein's portrait of Thomas Cromwell.  The cocktail choice fittingly was the 'Bloody Mary'.  I enjoyed being there in the details of a hand and the beginning of a 5 o'clock shadow.

It was quieting even without the Bloody Mary.

Then there's the Irish Rep's 'The Weir' on youtube.  One of my favorite plays that they've done.  I'd call it a very close play, to be absorbed as much as heard like O'Neill's 'Moon for the Misbegotten'.  We'll see if it works on youtube. 

Thanks for listening.

The BMI count continues and when there's breaking news you'll hear it here first.

Now this:

 

    

 

Policing the Police

I'll leave that to the experts as protests continue in reaction to George Floyd's death by police.  My question/concern is why was an officer with questionable police tactics with two rookies, one of whom was on his second shift?  Training?
My hope is that the protesters find sound substantial leadership.

Back in my neighborhood:

Monday Weight Report

BMI=32.8
down .4

On track

An 'E' for entertaining

I read 'The Man in the Red Coat' by Julian Barnes because it was inspired by a John Singer Sargent portrait that the author and I saw and admired at different times.  We were both intrigued to find out more about the subject.  It is the portrait of an elegant, handsome, precious gentleman.

He is Samuel Pozzi a commoner, and a society doctor who introduced Lister's hygiene practices to France and thereby reduced the death rate significantly.  How did that happen?  The author says he visited Lister when he was in England; saw his work and returned to Paris to do the same and told his colleagues.  This is not a 'study'.  Why did he visit Lister?  Why did doctors listen to him?  I'll need to read another book. 

  

The story begins with Pozzi traveling to England to go shopping with his two friends Counte De Montesquiou, acknowledged by the Count and Proust as one of the models for Baron de Charlus and Edmund De Polignac an impoverished Polish Prince not as 'public' a figure as his companions. 

Welcome to Le Belle Époque, Paris.  

Pozzi along with being a successful doctor was very popular with women.  Married with two children he was the lover according to their correspondence of Sarah Bernhardt, opera singer Georgette Leblanc, the actress Rejane and lifelong mistress Emma Fischhof.  

He was shot 4 times in the stomach by an ex-patient who mistakenly believed Dr. Pozzi had botched his operation.  Dr. Pozzi died of his wounds.  Death by irony?

I would have enjoyed a more thorough examination of Pozzi's life.  However we get less of Pozzi, 'The Man in the Red Coat', and more of Comte De Montesquiou whose life is filled with the stuff of gossip.  The Comte is the 'precious' gentleman: gay, snobbish, and in every 'page six' article if they had such a thing in 1890's Paris.

Prince Edmund de Polignac's life is interesting.  Like a lot of impoverished European aristocrats he needed to marry a rich American.  However he was a discreet gay.  To his good fortune Winnaretta Singer of the sewing machine fortune was in Paris and she was a discreet lesbian.  They married and through their love of music they created the most popular salon in Europe where the great artists, musical geniuses of Le Belle Époque attended and performed.  They took separate vacations which may or may not account for their long particular marital bliss.

The Man in the Red Coat:  Dr. Pozzi

The Count De Montesquiou

Prince Polignac

Winnaretta Singer, her self-portrait

    

Gramercy Park

It's a neighborhood, a Tavern and a Park.  Today it was my exercise goal, the Park that is; other days it might have been the Tavern.  At approximately 21st St. and Lexington Ave it's halfway to my goal of 10,000 steps.  So I took a few walks around the park and around Stuyvesant Park because I could get into Stuyvesant Park for my sunshine of Vit.D and a little of the old Ultraviolet.  'A little of the old ultraviolet' reminds me of  'A Clockwork Orange', great book, by Anthony Burgess but there they meant ultra violence.  You can't get into Gramercy Park without a Key and to think Gramercy is an old English word for 'many thanks'. 
Old English sarcasm.
Ultra violence, locked out, sarcasm, interesting path my thinking is taking today.  The Power of Food and Habit.
On the fence and through the fence: 

Yesterday's BMI 33.2, cal in 1607, cal out 510. 
It will  take about 7 or 8 lbs. to reduce the BMI by one point.  I prefer to work on this as a long time goal.  I'll use the BMI rather than lbs. and my first BMI goal is 30.0.

Morbidly Obese

Nancy Pelosi in response to President Trump's announcement that he is taking hydroxychloroquine:  He's 'morbidly obese', me too Nancy.  Time to focus on getting into shape.

 
Calories in and calories out are to be counted each day with a weigh in each morning. 
The major way that I like to exercise is walking and Stuyvesant Park is one of the places I go to.  It's a mile there and a mile back.  To walk around the park is a quarter mile.  Sore joints and muscles permitting I'd like to do 5 miles each day and some upper body weights 3x a week.

The Park today:

and on the street

Schedule, Routine, and Organization.