Category: Europe
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Bonies in the Art Museum (2021)
Bonies in the Art Museum (2021) (Nota bene: After Autumn Sonata, the first weekly post on my blog almost ten years ago, today’s post happens to be number 500. And I’m still there to continue!) The ‘Kunstmuseum’ (Art Museum) in The Hague, the GEM of Berlage, is a piece of art in itself. I think…
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‘Hollands Glorie’
‘Hollands Glorie’ ‘The pride of Holland’. In the 17th and 18th century the rich Dutch bourgeoisie built houses like this outside the cities at their newly acquired country estates. These were country houses (‘buitenhuizen’) where the owners would spend the summer months with their families. Between Amsterdam and Utrecht many of these country houses were…
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Getaway gateway
Getaway gateway A wall in the forest.A tightly closed gate. In my mind’s eye I see a fair maiden,kept in solitary confinement.Waiting for her Prince Charmingto come and carry her off. Photo of the week: Country estate Huis te Manpad, Heemstede, Netherlands 2021
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Cedrus libani
Cedrus libani “Spring is beautiful everywhere, but it is most beautiful in Lebanon. It is a spirit that roams round the earth but hovers over Lebanon, conversing with Kings and Prophets … repeating with the Holy Cedars of Lebanon the memory of ancient glory.” (Khalil Gibran)And after the ravages of war and other calamities, for…
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Shutter pig
Shutter pig It’s only an outline, the sawn out pig itself is gone.We look at an empty space, the negative form of a pig.So true to life that we see its round, fat body in front of us. Photo of the week: Shutter pig, Solalex, Villars-sur-Ollon, Switzerland 2021
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Cors des Alpes
Cors des Alpes A concert with two alpine horns and two accordions in an old Hydro Power Plant in the Rhône, where the river flows out of Lake Geneva. Very original, as for the music, the instruments and the location.The musicians played arrangements of old baroque compositions and more recent pieces specially composed for these…
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A wall in Kazimierz
A wall in Kazimierz Broken, mutilated, spread around in disarray,dug up from layers of dust and sand: memory fragments of the departed,fit together as a jigsaw puzzle. Memorial wall to the dead,for the eyes of the living. Photo of the week: 16th cent. Jewish R’emuh Cemetery wall, Kazimierz, Krakow, Poland 2007
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Memento mori
Memento mori When walking around in a graveyard we may be content of still belonging to the realm of the living, but it also inevitably reminds us of our own mortality. This is certainly the case in the graveyard of the Portuguese Jews near Amsterdam. Many of the gravestones carry images that denote death: an…
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Anno Mundi 5490
Anno Mundi 5490 The Jewish cemetery at ‘Ouderkerk aan de Amstel’ near Amsterdam is called Beth Haim which means House of Life. This tells us something about the Sephardim philosophy of life – and death. The picture shows a detail of a partly submerged gravestone in which we see a shepherdess with her cattle. A…
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Watery grave
Watery grave I saw this sculpted marble gravestone at the cemetery of the Portuguese Jewish community in ‘Ouderkerk aan de Amstel’. The Sephardim Jews had started settling in Amsterdam in the 16th century and their cemetery in nearby Ouderkerk dates from 1614. I used to pass and visit it regularly on my walks along the…
καιρός remembered 