Daily Archives: July 27, 2010

Art and Culture, Asia

Conversations About Art

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Summer                                    Waning Grandchildren Moon

The kids from Washington Technical College did not find this tour very interesting.  Not sure why, didn’t connect with them.  A few, yes, but there were wanderers, heading off to other objects.  The age range was wide, from 15 to 7 or 8.  That was part of it.  They perked up at the Han horse, the jade mountain (which I hadn’t planned to show them) and the Zhou and Shang bronze swords, spears.  Finally, I went with the kid who said he wanted to see samurai stuff and ended the tour in Japan.  Not a bad tour, not a great one.  Although, one of the women, whom I recognized from last year, said, “You gave us a great tour last year!”  Nice.

Wandered over to the new MCAD show and spent fifteen minutes or so talking with Aldo Moroni.  He’s an interesting, affable guy.  We have a shared interest in history and especially the classics.  The work under way at MCAD is set in fantasy mountains high above the earth, modeled after Chinese landscape paintings in the MIA collection.  I told him I’d just a tour of Chinese art so we talked a bit about Taoism.

Dogs

Dog Days

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Summer                                    Waning Grandchildren Moon

The dog days.   A bit from Wikipedia:

“The Dog Days originally were the days when Sirius rose just before or at the same time as sunrise (heliacal rising), which vegainwateris no longer true, owing to precession of the equinoxes. The Romans sacrificed a brown dog at the beginning of the Dog Days to appease the rage of Sirius, believing that the star was the cause of the hot, sultry weather.

Dog Days were popularly believed to be an evil time “when the seas boiled, wine turned sour, dogs grew mad, and all creatures became languid, causing to man burning fevers, hysterics, and phrensies” according to Brady’s Clavis Calendarium, 1813. [1]

In Ancient Rome, the Dog Days extended from July 24 through August 24 (or, alternatively July 23-August 23). ”

(Vega the wonder dog knows how to deal with the dog days.)

Let me see.  The Dog Star rises.  People are concerned.  So they kill a dog?  Hmmm.  Seems backwards to me.  Wouldn’t you want to care for the eponymous animal?  See what they got.  Another month of hot days anyway.  Their religion needed a bit of empirical feed-back.

Off to the museum today for the China tour.  Back for more thunderstorms.