The Bible had inspired many artists. With the subject about baby Jesus, Virgin Mary, and Mary's mom, Saint Ann, there were more than 1000 paintings. Yet the painting showing in this blog by Albrecht Durer is quite unique in its simplicity and haunting devotional painting of Saint Ann. Anne's hand on her daughter takes on a consolatory meaning. Anne's distant gaze suggests a premonition of Christ's Passion.
The drawing of the "Praying Hands" by Albrecht Durer (1508) is not only an art work by a famous German artist in the 16th century, but also a show of sibling love.
Albrecht Durer grew up in an impoverished German family with an elder brother. Both Albrecht and his older brother showed artistic talent when they were young. By the time for finding an art teacher for the talented young artist, the parent said to the children.
"Even I love to send both of you to art school, we can only afford to send only one to learn from the master. The other needs to stay home and work."
Albrecht's brother said to his young brother to take art lessons from a master and he would stay home to work and make money for the household.
Albrecht's paintings became very popular and made sufficient money. He said to his elder brother to take classes from art master.
His brother told him that he was not able to do the painting because of his hands, after many years of hard labor and lost their fine skills to do the paintings.
One day, when his brother was praying before an altar, Albrecht caught this moment to draw his brother's praying hands. With his brother's praying hands with many signs of hard labor, Albrecht showed both gratitude and his respect to his brother.
The story is from Genesis, Chapter 24. Abraham exiled at Canaan wanted to find a wife for Issac.He sent his servant, Eliezer with. 20 camels to his homeland, Chaldea/Haran. at Mesopotamia. Abraham instructed Eliezer to the center of the town where there was a well. Village young women would gather to fetch water. Eliezer would ask among the young women to give him and 20 camels to drink. Whoever give Eliezer and camels water, Eliezer would ask the lady her name and her parent to see if the lady came from the same ancestors of Abraham. Among the ladies, it was Rebecca who gave Eliezer and his camels drink. Rebecca was the daughter of Bethuel who was the son of Nahor. Nahor was the brother of Abraham. Eliezer then presented to Rebecca with a ring and the bracelet and told Rebecca that she was chosen to be Issac’s wife. The painting by Nicolas Poussin in 1648 showed the reactions of Rebecca and other ladies upon hearing the news. Enjoy yourself with the painting.
My wife and I were at my brother’s home and visited the Sleepy Hollow and refreshed the story by Washington Irving, “The Legend of the Sleepy Hollow”. The story began with the haunted Sleepy Hollow, and the headless horseman who as the story said that the horseman would rise up from his grave in the cemetery and would ride his horse in search of his head. In the village, came with a lanky schoolmaster from Connecticut, named Ichabod Crane. Crane was very superstitious, and would love to listen to ghost stories by the Dutch women in the village as Village Dutch women would love to befriend with Crane. In the village, there was a beautiful and rich woman, named Katrina van Tassel, to whom Crane wanted to earn her hands. Yet, Katrina had another suitor, a local hero, named Abraham van Brunt. Both Ichabod and Abraham were invited to a harvest party hosted by father of Katrina. In the party, Abraham told Ichabod another ghost story. Ichabod planned to propose to Katrina but did not succeed. Feeling depressed, Ichabod rode his very temperamental horse called the gunpowder home. On the pitch dark night, and on an intersection, came with the headless horseman who threw things at Ichabod. Ichabod fell from the horse, and the next morning, Ichabod and his horse gunpowder disappeared from the village. All they could find are the broken pumpkins, Ichabod’s discarded hat, and the trampled saddle of Gunpowder. Now, it is up to your imagination on what was really happened on that night.
The story was noted on August 17 while my family was at Ithaca, New York. The telescope was conceptualized by a famed astronomer, George Hale in 1928 who wished to build the largest telescope to be situated at Palomar Mountain. He commissioned Corning to build the telescope with the Corning Pyrex technology. Corning engineer, Mr. George McCauley took the challenge. One great challenge was not to break the mirror during the cooling. With this gigantic glass mirror, avoiding cracks during cooling was critical. At Corning, they first build a honeycomb-like mold so that the mirror could be annealed slowly and uniformly. Their first attempt was not successful. In the 2nd attempt, the mirror was annealed for a year. The mirror was then transported to Palomar, California in a train with a train speed of 25 miles/hr. The mirror was then installed at Palomar, CA in 1948.
Healthy Living-2021
COVID has taken most of the society attention in 2020. However, quite a few friends, relatives are ill or killed, not due to COVID, but cancer, and other degenerate diseases.
A dear friend of us who went with us to Canadian Rocky, in 2002, the year I retired from Kimberly-Clark and joined the UW-Green Bay chemistry faculty passed away in November due to dementia. My sister-in-law is gravely ill due to metastasized pancreatic cancer. She cannot ingest any food including the liquid protein drink. A neighbor of us who moved to California is currently treating his metastasized prostate cancer. According to his wife’s FB post, the cancer has already invaded his brain and he needs brain surgery. Another friend is stricken by ALS who is witnessing losing muscle strength, start with the legs, then the arms.
Prevention is the key, and healthy eating is probably the most important thing a person can do to prevent such dreadful degenerate disease. Yet, it is so difficult to do the healthy eating or other life style changes when people surrounding us are still quite ignorant about the diet and other life-style choices.
None of my family members, including spouse, kids and grandkids are eating healthy. A week ago, we had a face-time with my son and his family at New York City. What’s for lunch? “Sausage, pizza, and soda” was the answer. During the summer, we had a hike at the Mt. Reiner with my other son’s family living in Michigan. After the hike, the family had ice cream treat. After that, they order a dinner that included a soda for my granddaughter. I took a look of the label on the soda; the bottle of soda contains 39 g of sugar in the drink. When I try to chide in for disapproval, my son was not pleased; nor is my wife.
The point I want to make is that one individual is very hard to stick to the healthy living life style when the person who is surrounded by group of the individuals who are ignorant about food and other life style choice.
The purpose of this blog post is to create a community that we all can help each other to choose healthy life style so that we don’t have to suffer the dreadful degenerate diseases in the future.
