Caught on Film

 

Yesterday I posted a poem by Dorothy Parker and it brought back memories from back in 2003.  I was visiting New York City with a group of friends and we all wanted to have a drink at the Algonquin Hotel where Dorothy Parker and other members of the "round table" met for drinks, gossip and literary discussions.  My little group of friends were all people I worked with and one of them snapped this photo of me finishing off my martini.  The photo quickly became something of a joke among us. So here I am looking a bit like a lush with two empty glasses in front of me and one in my hand.  I might have fit in perfectly with that little "round table" group from the 1920's.  

By the way, those two empty glasses belonged to others.  One martini is all I can handle.  For more about Dorothy Parker and the Algonquin Hotel, check this link.  

Monet First, Then Cake

 

My friends Julie and Dave subscribe to some online lectures from the art historian Paola Vojnovic and they invited me to join them at their house on Saturday for a session on Monet and Japan.  It was a fascinating lecture about how Monet was influenced by Japanese art to the point of designing his garden in Giverny after a Japanese garden.  The expert giving the program was Ross King, an author and art historian who has written a book "Monet: The Water Lily Pond".  I got to thinking that surely I have a photo of one of Monet's garden paintings featured during the lecture and sure enough here is one I took at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. He featured a number of other Monet paintings during the lecture and he discussed how Monet wasn't the only artist inspired by Japanese art.

I decided since Julie invited me to join the lecture, I should bring something for all of us to enjoy.  I baked my first French Apple Cake of the season.  It's one of my favorite fall/winter cakes.  I think of it as being more healthy than most cakes because it contains more apples than cake batter.  It's not hard to make.  In fact, the hardest part of this cake is peeling the apples.  You can find the recipe here.

I'm a Museum Nerd

 

I am what many people would call a museum nerd.  I love a good museum and I seek them out wherever I go.  I also love the ancient history of Egypt so, museums that feature Egyptian artifacts have a special draw for me.  (Above is the Temple of Dendur at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.)

Yesterday I read an article in the New York Times about the brand new Grand Egyptian Museum in Cairo and it inspired me to scan through my photos and look at all the Egyptian artifacts that I've seen that are not actually in Egypt any longer.  The Egyptian government would very much like to change that.

I've visited the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum (pictured above) at least twice and I'd very much like to visit it again.

I found this duplicate of Nefertiti at the Rosicrucian Museum.  The original is in a museum in Berlin. The Egyptian government has petitioned for its return.  

When I was in London last August, I made a point of walking through the gallery with all the Egyptian statues and artifacts at the British Museum.  

One of those artifacts is the Rosetta Stone which the Egyptian government would very much like to have returned to them.  According to the Times article, negotiations are taking place.

When I was in London last August, I also took a day trip to Oxford and visited the Ashmolean Museum for the first time.  I was happy to discover another museum with a section dedicated to Egypt and the Middle East.  

The photos in that Times article are pretty spectacular and they insprired me to create this post.  Now if I could just figure out how to get to Cairo to see this new museum in person. That would truly be an adventure. Check out the photos on Google.  It's a place to be admired.