Obituary to Diana Princess of Wales - Earl of Spencer Speech -

Obituary to Diana Princess of Wales speech by the Earl of Spencer
September 9th 1997

I stand before you today, the representative of a family in grief, in a country in mourning, before a world in shock.
 

We are all united, not only in our desire to pay our respects to Diana, but rather in our need to do so, because such was her extraordinary appeal that the tens of millions of people taking part in this service all over the world via television and radio who never actually met her feel that they too lost someone close to them in the early hours of Sunday morning.   It is a more remarkable tribute to Diana then I can ever hope to offer to her today.

  Diana was the very essence of compassion, of duty, of style, of beauty.  All over the world she was the symbol of selfless humanity. A standard bearer for the rights of the truly downtrodden. A very British girl who transcended nationality. Someone with a natural nobility who was classless and who proved in the last year that she needed no royal title to continue to generate her particular brand of magic.

Today is our chance to say ‘thank you’ for the way you brightened our lives, even though God granted you but half a life. We will all feel cheated always that you were taken from us so young and yet we must learn to be grateful that you came at all.  Only now you are gone do we truly appreciate what we are without, and we want you to know that life without you is very, very difficult.

We have all despaired for our loss over the past week and only the strength of the message you gave us through your years of giving has afforded us the strength to move forward.
There is a temptation to rush, to canonize your memory. There is no need to do so. You stand tall enough as a human being of unique qualities, and do not need to be seen as a saint.
 

Indeed, to sanctify your memory would be to miss out on the very core of your being—your wonderfully mischievous sense of humour with a laugh that bent you double, your joy for life transmitted wherever you took your smile and the sparkle in those unforgettable eyes, your boundless energy which you could barely contain.  But your greatest gift was your intuition and it was a gift you used wisely. This is what under pinned all your other wonderful attributes.
 

And if we look to analyse what it was about you that had such a wide appeal we find it in your instinctive feel for what was really important in all our lives.  Without your God-given sensitivity, we would be immersed in greater ignorance at the anguish of Aids and HIV sufferers, the plight of the homeless, the isolation of lepers, the random destruction of land mines.
 

Diana explained to me once that it was her innermost feelings of suffering that made it possible for her to connect with her constituency of the rejected.  And here we come to another truth about her. For all the status, the glamour, the applause, Diana remained throughout a very insecure person at heart, almost childlike in her desire to do good for others so she could release herself from deep feelings of unworthiness of which her eating disorders were merely a symptom.  The world sensed this part of her character and cherished her vulnerability.
 

The last time I saw Diana was on July 1st, her birthday, in London when typically she was not taking time to celebrate her special day with friends but was guest of honour at a fund-raising charity evening. She sparkled, of course.
 

But I would rather cherish the days I spent with her in March when she came to visit me and my children at our home in South Africa. I am proud of the fact that, apart from when she was on public display meeting President Mandela, we managed to contrive to stop the ever-present paparazzi from getting a single picture of her. That meant a lot to her.
 

These are days I will always treasure. It was as if we were transported back to our childhood when we spent such an enormous amount of time together as the two youngest in the family.  Fundamentally she hadn’t changed at all from the big sister who mothered me as a baby, fought with me at school, who endured those long journeys between our parents’ home with me at weekends.

It is a tribute to her level-headedness and strength that despite the most bizarre life after her childhood, she remained intact, true to herself.  There is no doubt she was looking for a new direction in her life at this time.  She talked endlessly of getting away from England, mainly because of the treatment that she received at the hands of the newspapers.   I don’t think she ever understood why her genuinely good intentions were sneered at by the media, why there appeared to be a permanent quest on their behalf to bring her down. It is baffling.
 

My own and only explanation is that genuine goodness is threatening to those at the opposite end of the moral spectrum.  It is a point to remember that of all the ironies about Diana, perhaps the greatest was this: a girl given the name of the ancient goddess of hunting was, in the end, the most hunted person of the modern age.

 

She would want us today to pledge ourselves to protecting her beloved boys, William and Harry, from a similar fate, and I do this here, Diana, on your behalf.  We will not allow them to suffer the anguish that used regularly to drive you to tearful despair. And beyond that, on behalf of your mother and sisters, I pledge that we, your blood family, will do all we can to continue the imaginative and loving way in which you were steering these two exceptional young men so that their souls are not simply immersed by duty and tradition but can sing openly as you planned.
 

We fully respect the heritage into which they have both been born and will always respect and encourage them in their royal role. But we, like you, recognize the need for them to experience as many different aspects of life as possible to arm them spiritually and emotionally for the years ahead. I know you would have expected nothing less from us.
William and Harry, we all care desperately for you today. We are all chewed up with sadness at the loss of a woman who wasn’t even our mother. How great your suffering is we cannot even imagine.

 I would like to end by thanking God for the small mercies he has shown us at this dreadful time, for taking Diana at her most beautiful and radiant and when she had joy in her private life.   Above all, we give thanks for the life of a woman I’m so proud to be able to call my sister the unique, the complex, the extraordinary and irreplaceable Diana whose beauty, both internal and external, will never be extinguished from our minds.

The Golden Lasso of Truth - “Please take my hand. I give it to you as a gesture of friendship and love, and of faith freely given. I give you my hand and welcome you into my dream.” - Wonder Woman

 

"a deadly weapon, that not only binds you, and follows  its mistress'

 commands, the damned thing can see into your soul."  Gail Simone

The Lasso of Truth is a fictional weapon wielded by DC Comics superheroine,  Wonder Woman, Princess Diana of Themyscira. It is usually referred to as the Magic Lasso or Golden Lasso and forces anyone it captures to obey and tell the truth.

Creator of Wonder Woman, William Moulton Marston  also worked on the systolic blood-pressure test while a graduate student in psychology at Harvard University.  Blood pressure was one of several elements measured in the polygraph test invented by John Augustus Larson in 1921 though it had been associated with deception since at least 1895, when Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909)  invented a device that police used to measure changes in the blood pressure of crime suspects.

 Wonder Woman's Magic Lasso or Golden Lasso was the direct result of their research. In noting the correlation between it and the systolic blood-pressure test, Geoffry Bunn states:

"Anyone caught in the lasso found it impossible to lie. And because Wonder Woman used it to extract confessions and compel obedience, the golden lasso was of course nothing less than a lie detector.  Like the lie detector upon which it was modeled, Wonder Woman's Golden Lasso produced truth - and by implication justice and freedom too - through coercion."

Empowered by the Fires of Hestia, the Lasso forces anyone held by it to tell the absolute truth. Furthermore, simple physical contact with the lasso can be enough to have this effect such as when Barbara Ann Minerva attempted to swindle it from Diana, but was forced to confess her intentions when she held the lasso. It is also infinitely long, and can lengthen depending on its user's desire. The fires are said to even be able to cure insanity, as they did in the case of Ares, God of War, when he attempted to incite World War III. He renounced his plan when the lasso showed him that such a war would not only destroy all life on Earth as he wished, but also any potential worshipers he sought to gain from it. 

The lasso possesses incredible strength and is virtually unbreakable. One story even showed Wonder Woman using the lasso to contain the explosion of two atom bombs. Unable to stop the American bombs that would set off a Russian doomsday machine, she wrapped the bombs in her lasso and let the bombs explode^.  It has easily held beings with tremendous superhuman strength such as Superman, Captain Marvel, who has the strength of Hercules and the Power of Zeus, and Power Girl, as well as gods such as Ares and Heracles. (In several Pre-Crisis stories, it was even capable of binding Wonder Woman herself on the occasions she was caught, sometimes by Gunther.) It is shown that Wonder Woman still has her powers even if bound by the lasso .

 The only times it has ever been shown to break was when truth itself was challenged. For example, in JLA the lasso broke when she refused to believe the confession it wrought from Rama Khan of Jarhanpur.  Elsewhere, when the backwards-thinking monster Bizarro was caught in Trinity, he was horrified by the very idea of truth.   As the antithesis of reason and logic he was able to break the lasso.  The fairy tale villainess, Queen of Fables, who has the power to bring any fictional or non-true character to life, and is herself "fictional," had power over the lasso by bringing fictional characters to life and having her non-true minions break it. It is worth noting that Wonder Woman had in fact hoped to win simply by lassoing her and let its powers of truth destroy the fairy tale villain.

The magic lasso has subsequently been shown to produce a wide array of effects. When battling the entity Decay, Wonder Woman used the lasso's link to Gaia, the Greek Goddess of the Earth, as a circuit between the earth and the monster, pumping the entity of death with life-giving energies that destroyed the creature. Wonder Woman has also used it to create a ring of protective fire around people to protect them from Circe's bestiamorphs. The lasso's energies are also shown to be capable  of destroying beings forcibly resurrected by the rings of the Black Lantern Corps .   As the goddess of truth, Diana also used it to take memories of Donna Troy and restore her to life. In Pre-Crisis comics, the lasso also had the power to effectively mind control those bound.

In the mini-comic enclosed with the release of the Kenner Super Powers figure of Wonder Woman, the Amazing Amazon ensnares a mind-controlled Superman with her lasso, preventing him from destroying the Washington Monument. Superman is unable to resist the powers of the lasso as Wonder Woman renders him unconscious. Later, Wonder Woman uses her lasso on Brainiac and commands the villain to release Superman from his mind control.

In later Post-Crisis comics, the power of truth was written as innate to Wonder Woman herself, with the lasso merely a focus of that power. A storyline in the Morrison-era JLA comics by Joe Kelly depicted the lasso as an archetypal manifestation of universal truth, and, once broken- when Wonder Woman doubted the truth that it was revealing to her because she didn't like it-, disrupted the underlying truth of reality itself.

With the lasso broken, reality came to be dictated by whatever people believed to be the case, starting with older beliefs and extending to beliefs that were held by various individuals in the present, resulting in:

• Earth becoming the center of the universe for two weeks, 
• Earth becoming flat for several hours, the moon turning into cheese for a time, 
• Kyle Rayner assuming a Hal Jordan-like appearance- as many people still saw Hal as 'the' Green Lantern 
• Batman fading in and out of existence due to his 'urban legend' status meaning that people weren't sure if he even existed.

 This allegorical interpretation is often ignored in later stories and by much of fandom, as the lasso was long established as magically unable to break, and was never before stated to be the ultimate representation of truth. During her adventures with the Justice League team of superheroes Diana eventually battled a villain named Amazo who was able to duplicate aspects of the lasso for his own use.

 In the Elseworlds tale Red Son, Wonder Woman was subdued and restrained in her own lasso by the Soviet terrorist incarnation of Batman.  In order to free herself and rescue Superman from Lex Luthor's deadly red sun lamps, Wonder Woman snapped the cords of her "indestructible" lasso. The shock of the incident appeared to age Diana, leaving her grey-haired, frail, and unable to speak.

During her current tenure as writer for Wonder Woman, Gail Simone has further explored the nature of the Lasso of Truth, describing it as "a deadly weapon, that not only binds you, and follows its mistress’ commands, the damned thing can see into your soul."
 
*More about Geoff Bunn

Dr. Geoff Bunn devised the 'Mind your Head' exhibition at the Science Museum in 2001 to mark the British Psychological Society's centenary. A discursive psychologist, he is interested in the historical origins and consequences of psychological language terms such as 'soul', 'mind' and 'brain'. His forthcoming book (The Truth Machine: A Social History of the Lie Detector) examines how assumptions about human nature are built into science and technology. He is currently Chair of the British Psychological Society's History & Philosophy of Psychology Section.


“Please take my hand. I give it to you as a gesture of friendship and love, and of faith freely given. I give you my hand and welcome you into my dream.” -Wonder Woman #167

Note from Leo:  As always, my most sincere thanks to Wikipedia and Google

Saint Ava

I once was blind

but now I see

Saint Ava is a Roman Catholic saint.  Ava was the daughter of King Pepin. She was cured of  blindness  by St. Rainfredis. She then became a Benedictine nun  at Dinant, Hainaut, located today in Belgium, and was elected c. 845.  Her feast day is April 29.

Ava has worldwide meanings, making it difficult to pinpoint its true etymology and origin. From the German roots, Ava means "bird or birdlike". From the Latin, Ava means "pretty" or "Living One". Ava is the Afghan word for "voice" and the Akposso word for "sky" or "heaven". It also comes from the Old English for "Breath of Life". Some believe that the name Ava came from the Hebrew name "Chava," which means "life" or "serpent," while others point out the place-name "Ivah" appearing in the Bible.

The meaning of the name Ava is Like A Bird
The origin of the name Ava is Latin
Alternate spellings: Aiva

 Dinant (French pronunciation: [di.nɑ̃]) is a Walloon   city and municipality located on the River Meuse in the Belgian province of Namur, Belgium. It is around 30 km south-east of Charleroi. The Dinant municipality includes the old communes of Anseremme, Bouvignes-sur-Meuse, Dréhance, Falmagne, Falmignoul, Foy-Notre-Dame, Furfooz, Lisogne, Sorinnes, and Thynes.

 la Citadelle de Dinant

 Saint Jerome, 

by Joachim Patenier (circa 1520). 

The rocks of Dinant were an inspiration for Patenier, one of the first landscape painters.

Origins to the 10th century
The Dinant area was already populated in Neolithic, Celtic, and Roman times. The first mention of Dinant as a settlement dates from the 7th century, a time at which Saint Perpete, bishop of Tongeren (with see now at Maastricht), took Dinant as his residence and founded the church of Saint Vincent. In 870, Charles the Bald gave part of Dinant to be administered by the Count of Namur, the other part by the bishop of Tongeren, then Liège.

In the 11th century, the emperor Henry IV granted several rights over Dinant to the Prince-Bishop of Liège, including market and justice rights. From that time on, the city became one of the 23 ‘‘bonnes villes’’ (or principal cities) of the Bishopric of Liège. The first stone bridge on the Meuse and major repair to the castle, which had been built earlier, also date from the end of the 11th century. Throughout this period, and until the end of the 18th century, Dinant shared its history with its overlord Liège, sometimes rising in revolt against it, sometimes partaking in its victories and defeats, mostly against the neighbouring County of Namur.

Drawing without sight

Eddy & Edna

I closed my eyes and drew a bunch of lines with nothing special in mind.  Then I put color in the spaces between the lines. This seems to me like a metaphor for the way some of us live our lives, moving forward on a wing and a prayer, hoping for the best, making the most of what we have.

 The phrase "On a Wing and a Prayer"  may have originated during WWII.  In the 1942, a film The Flying Tigers had John Wayne's character Captain Jim Gordon say, in a reference to the flight of replacement pilots:

Gordon: Any word on that flight yet?
Rangoon hotel clerk: Yes sir, it was attacked and fired on by Japanese aircraft. She's coming in on one wing and a prayer.

The phrase was taken up by songwriters Harold Adamson and Jimmie McHugh and their WWII patriotic song Coming in on a Wing and a Prayer, 1943.  It tells of a damaged warplane, barely able to limp back to base: 

One of our planes was missing
Two hours overdue
One of our planes was missing
With all its gallant crew
The radio sets were humming
We waited for a word
Then a noise broke
Through the humming and this is what we heard

Comin' in on a wing and a prayer
Comin' in on a wing and a prayer
Though there's one motor gone
We can still carry on
Comin' in on a wing and a prayer

What a show, what a fight, boys
We really hit our target for tonight
How we sing as we limp through the air
Look below, there's our field over there
With just one motor gone
We can still carry on
Comin' in on a wing and a prayer

First Day of School

Anna Sophia tells the story of her harrowing first day of school.  This is a semi- autobiographical account of a young girl's first experience with society.  

It was a September morning in 1948 and mother was dressing me for my first day of school.  In advance of this momentous occasion she had purchased all the items I would need to be a first grade student at the public school. A metal lunch box with a thermos; red patent leather shoes;  a supply of white anklet socks;  yellow galoshes;   a blue rain coat with white Scottie dogs on the pockets;   a green wool coat with a black velvet collar and matching black velvet hat that tied under my chin and had ear flaps;  and five bright  plaid dresses with white cuffs and collars.

I remember standing on the kitchen table so mother could pin up and later hand stitch the he hem of my dresses.  I was small for my age and my clothes always required alterations.   Although I was told that all of these preparations were for something called school, I had no idea what school meant.  There were no books in our house.  My mother and father were not book people.    I had coloring books and paper dolls, but that was the extent of it.  My father told me wonderful stories but they didnt come from a book.  

 A boy next door, several years older than me, taught me the alphabet song, but  it was just that, a song.   I had no concept of letters or of combinations of letters and their use in forming words.  I knew only the spoken word and the meanings behind the spoken word.  But I clearly did not comprehend the meaning of the word school.  If I had, I wouldn't have been so complacent, so cooperative, so trusting.   

Mother's friend, Helen, drove us to school on the first day. Helen waited outside in her car while  Mother took me by the hand and walked me across the playground, up the stairs and through the big double doors. Mrs. Schieble greeted us as we entered her first grade classroom.  She had blond hair and a soft voice.  She showed me where to sit but I wouldn't let go of my mothers hand.  I had never been in a room with so many other children and had no intention of staying there without my mother.  I put my thumb in my mouth and buried my head in her.  She pleaded with me to sit down at my desk but I refused.     After a while she told me that she had Helens car keys and that she had to go out and give the keys to Helen and then she would come right back.  I waited for a long while, with my thumb still in my mouth, until I realized it was a trick and started crying.  There was another girl who was also crying.  Mrs. Schieble called us cry babies.   

The next day was much worse.   Mother put me on a big  yellow school bus, kicking and screaming.  I was terrified.  My fear and horror over what was happening to me was so intense, that even today when I think of it, I can feel the panic, but in a detached way.   I refused to take a seat.  That would be committing myself to the horrible situation that I found myself in. The bus driver yelled at me and said I had to take a seat or I was going to make all the other kids late for school.   I didn't care.   I thought about my half-eaten peanut butter toast still sitting on the kitchen table.  I remembered mother saying, "Come on slowpoke, finish that toast or you'll miss your bus."     I didn't think it was actually going to happen.   A bus coming to pick up  me?  Never!  No  way!   I guess I was in denial.   

Between sobs I tried to tell the bus driver that I didn't  finish my peanut butter toast.  The bigger kids started laughing and singing, "Cry baby cry, stick your finger in your eye."   I threw up all over my brand new shoes.  Everyone was saying, "Phew !"   The bus started moving again.  I lost my balance and fell on the floor.  I bit my lip and my tongue  and  I  was bleeding.  The bus stopped and the bus driver yelled,  "Get up!  Get up off that floor right this minute and get in your seat or get off the bus!"    

I couldn't get off the bus because we were down around the bend in Hell's Corner where all the juvenile delinquents lived,  but  he  didn't seem to care when I pointed that out to him so I sat down, thoroughly humiliated, next to a girl who  smelled like  buttered popcorn.   She was  picking her nose and giggling.  She reached into her pocket and handed me a lolly-pop.   It tasted like lemon flavored blood.

My Love/Hate Relationship with - Guess Who?

 

ars Technica

Data Liberation

Why do you call yourselves "The Data Liberation Front"?

We started as an internal engineering team back in 2007 and couldn't agree on the name, so we came up with this name as an homage to The Judean People's Front, the splinter group in Monty Python's Life of Brian that spends most of its time bickering.  In addition, we do see ourselves as being somewhat subversive, not so much within Google, but insofar as it's unusual for a big company to work to make it easier for their customers to leave them.

What's with the logo?

It grew out of the fact that we see ourselves fighting for the freedom of the users.  So basically, it's another joke.  Har har har. :-)

 Why did you start The Data Liberation Front?

For a couple of reasons.  The first reason is that we heard our CEO, Eric Schmidt, speak out against lock-in time and time again:

How do you be big without being evil?  We don't trap end users.
So if you don't like Google, if for whatever reason we do a bad
job for you, we make it easy for you to move to our competitor.

We started looking at our products and discovered that while the door to leave wasn't locked, in some cases it was a bit "stuck" and we thought that we could do better.

Why are you doing this?  What's the catch?

We're doing this because we want our users to stay with us because they want to.  While locking users in is a way to keep them in the short term, we believe that the way to keep users in the long term is to keep innovating and making our products better so that they choose to stay with us.  And besides, if someone stops using one of our products today, we hope that they would be willing to try one of our other products at some point in the future.

Moog Synthesizer

The Art and Technology Behind Google's Doodles 

Webs.com is getting on my last nerve today.

Webs.com is getting on my last nerve today.

St Mark - Protect us against mosquitoes (and biting flies)

Sign on the door, Gone Fishing, was going to be my last post until we get back from vacation,but ........  things have changed.   It was brought to my attention, and followed by my own research this morning, that the place we are going, an island off the Eastern shore of Maryland,  is infested with mosquitoes and biting green head flies.   I am the one who chose this destination for our big family get-to-gether, and now I feel like I have unwittingly offered up my family to be eaten alive or driven insane by mosquitoes and flies.  I'm not worried so much about the adults, although I don't want their vacation to be miserable because of these hideous insects, but I am very concerned for the little children.  So, what can I do about the situation at this late date?  What I usually do when I'm faced with a problem that seems insurmountable.  Call on the saints and angels.  

I find it extremely interesting that St. Mark is portrayed with a lion, something I just found out during my research this morning.  I simple googled "saints who protect against insect bites" and was led to Saint Mark the Evangelist. Since I am a Leo, this made me smile from ear to ear.  I don't know how he got to be the patron of insect bites, maybe it's because he spent a lot of time in Africa.   And then, of course, there is a story sticking in my mind, something I read earlier this morning while on my quest for a solution to the insect problem.  Saint Mark, before his conversion, was  appalled, perhaps even horrified, at the idea of Christians eating the flesh and drinking the blood of Jesus Christ.  That seems a very good reason to put him in charge of protecting us from insects, especially blood drinking, flesh eating insects. 

Agnolo Bronzino, Saint Mark, c. 1525.

 Oil on wood, Cappella Capponi, Santa Felicita, Florence.

Note on the Door

A New Member

Young Girl With A Swan

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Completion Date: 1886

I decided to re-blog this because today (drum roll) I have a new member.   A beautiful and intelligent woman named Swan.  I originally posted this blog back in February 14, 2012, Valentines Day, on the occasion of my very first member, a talented fashion illustrator with a terrific resume and a wonderful blog of his own called, "Oscar de la Rip Off".  Dave had a wonderful sense of humor and told wonderful and personal stories about his personal life and his experiences in the world of fashion.  I don't know what happened to Dave.  One day he was just gone and so was his blog.  Dave, wherever you are I hope you are okay and nothing bad has happened to you.  

Back to Swan.  I hope if she sees this she will not be embarrassed that I am honoring her with this re-blog.  I can't find a way to comment on her blog site, "Divine Comedy of Autistic Spectrum Errors", which has a wealth of information and personal insights on Austism and its spectrum.  Just about anything you would like to know on the subject of Autism you can find there, or here   She is also a wonderful artist, so if you visit her site,  be sure to check out her artwork.  Swan, I am so happy to have you as a member.  A very warm welcome to you. 

"Hey Ma, did yuh hear the news?  Leo's got herself a bran' new member. 

Some feller goes by the name o' Dave, a genuine artiste from none other'n 

New York City.  Hear t' tell she's tickled pink 'bout it.   Least ways, that's

what ol' Birdie Hicks was sayin' over t' the Grange meetin' t'other night."

"Land sakes, Pa, you call that news?  I knowed that two days ago.  Now, unless

you's a fixin' t' whisper sweet nothin's in my ear,  or you got somethin' special
t' give me, oh, I dunno, like a purty valentine or a box o' chocolates, git yerself
out o'  my kitchen  an' start mendin' that chicken fence like you been promisin'
so's  I don't have t' waste my time wanderin' all over tarnation lookin' fer eggs."  

This is a Wonderful Day
I woke up this morning to find that I had a member.  It took me by surprise and made my day. All these months with not a soul in sight, and suddenly, on this Valentine's Day, I log in and notice there is someone sitting next to me in the member section of my blog.   I was resolved to being the only member into eternity or there about,  and now I have a follower.  I'm not going to feign sophistication and act blase  about this new development in my personal blogosphere; I'm thrilled.   Welcome, my friend.



Well, my heart's in the Highlands at the break of day
Over the hills and far away
There's a way to get there, and I'll figure it out somehow
But I'm already there in my mind
And that's good enough for now
Bob Dylan

"I love the Holy Spirit. It needs to be stood for in these times. When those who claim to represent it are mocking it in fact. And holding it hostage." Sinead O'Connor

Open Letter To Sinead O'Connor

Dear Sinead,
Sorry for making your right foot too large and your legs too short, the two most obvious mistakes among a litany of errors.  Your right foot is too large because it was the last thing I did and I was really tired after working on you all day.   I didn't have the energy or the time for a do-over, I needed a shower (phew) and everyone was wondering when we were going to have dinner.  Your legs are too short mostly because I didn't plan ahead and thus ran out of space on  the  virtual canvas.  I attempted to make them appear longer by  hoisting up your cammies and shortening your waist and  jacket.  That was not a good idea.  It made you look like a Hobbit, not that I have anything against Hobbits.  (I absolutely adore Frodo, don't you?)  Your head is too big for your body: mia culpa, mia culpa, mia culpa. You look very stiff and hunched over, I apologize for that, but, well, as you know,  none of us is perfect, but each of us is beautiful in our own way.

Wishing you all the best
a long time admirer,
Leo

  

"I feel God didn't make more than one of us for nothing, Bob. That's why I'm open. We're here to be real with each other. And relate honestly to each other. And I don't have any shame about being open, whatever it is I happen to be being open about. It's a beautiful thing to be a real live human being and relate to other real live human beings, be it Twitter, or blogs, or letters to you, or anything else."
Sinead O'Connor 

(from an open letter to Bob Dylan which you can find in its entirety on her site) 

 Sinead is back !!!!!  I've always had great admiration and respect for her and I'm ecstatic to hear her and see her in such magnificent form.  The strength of her spirit thrills me to the core.  She rises above ignorance and persecution and waves the truth in the face of lies and liars like a holy flag.  Please visit her site to fully appreciate the rise and wingspan of this beautiful Phoenix. Her letter of July22, 2012 to the Daily Mail is exquisite. 

Sinead O'Connor official site
Sinead's open letter to the Daily Mail

Sinead O'Connor 1988 Concert Poster. 

Concert Poster Art 

The Mother

"Am I not your mother?"

"Do you know that our soul is composed of harmony?" - Leonardo da Vinci

The Blues Singers

Leaves were falling ..Just like embers
In colors red and gold they set us on fire
Burning just like a moonbeam ..in our eyes

Chorus:
Somebody said they saw me
Swinging the world by the tail
Bouncing over a white cloud.
Killing the Blues

I am guilty of something
I hope you never do because there is nothing
Sadder than losing .. yourself in love

Repeat Chorus:

Repeat Chorus:

Now, you ask me Just to leave you
To go out on my own and get what I need to
You want me to find ..what I've already had


Somebody said they saw me
Swinging the world by the tail
Bouncing over a white cloud.
Killing the Blues

"The effects of music on the human body are numerous and beneficial when applied properly. First, music with its changes in volume, intervals, and tempo causes changes in bodily functions. These changes include: "pulse rate, respiration and blood pressure. If an adult or a child feels lethargic, he should choose music that has major chords, a fast tempo, and is played moderately loud. This combination is revitalizing, energizing, and stimulating. Likewise, when a child is hyperactive and needs to calm down, or an adult is tense and needs to relax, he should choose music that has minor chords, a slow tempo, and is played softly. This combination induces relaxation. The higher the note, the more rapid the vibrations, which "produce a strong nervous stimulus" that increases the pulse, respiration, and blood pressure, consequently, stimulating the body to activity. Similarly, the lower the note, the slower the vibrations, which "produce a decrease in nervous stimulus" that decreased the pulse, respiration, and blood pressure, thereby signaling the body to relax and rest. The volume of the music that the individual is listening to will produce different emotions. These emotions have direct effects on how the individual feels physically. Loud music "may give the listener a feeling of being protected." Whereas, soft music "may give the listener a feeling of intimacy and serenity"

 Music Hath Charms to Heal

East Coastamite

"East Coastamite is a rare, radioactive mineral first described by Lord McKinley Morganfield in 1832. It is not considered to be Earthen, but to have fallen from outer space, most probably as ejected material from a passing comet. Some scientists, however, speculate the remnants are from Earth’s time as a fueling station / rest stop for inter-galactic truckers during the Texaconiferous Period, due to its ability to manipulate properties of space-time when super-heated. East Coastamite is also believed to have played a role in the extinction of the dinosaurs.

 While considered relatively safe for human consumption in managed doses, East Coastamite was favored by KGB operatives for covert assassinations of political dissidents. The IAEA now closely regulates the enjoyment of East Coastamite, and numerous wars have been fought in sub-Saharan Africa over the precious few mines that remain." M. Wordman

East Coastamite Home Page