2017: Piece of Mindful

A certain blogger I know is a high school teacher. People who frequent this blog know to grant no special status on that profession, as its function is to keep the chains invisible.  This teacher does not know that, of course. (If teachers don’t know their own function, well, then, who was it that asked the famous question … “is our children learning?”)

This particular teacher promotes a method of intellectual exploration called use of “trusted sources.” Each step in the thought process must be sanctioned by a higher authority. It is our educational system reduced to its core:

                                                                    Obey.

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Vermeer the Forger, Part Three

Vermeer’s Visitors
There are two brief diary accounts of contemporaries meeting Vermeer: Pieter Teding van Berkhout (above) and Balthasar de Monconys (below). The former mentions seeing several Vermeer paintings of which their chief virtue was their “most extraordinary and curious perspectives”. Van Berkhout made two trips to see Vermeer originals; the first appears to have been to Pieter Van Ruijven’s digs to survey his collection*. There is no mention of a purchase, which is troubling because van Berkhout was a prominent collector. Odder still is the second diary entry, written a little more than a month after the first visit, which reads almost as if van Berkhout doesn’t recall meeting Vermeer that first time. It’s possible that Vermeer was not in attendance if van Berkhout did meet with van Ruijven the first time around.
*I’m convinced that Van Ruijven owned Vermeer’s entire output, even that which was yet to be painted. Vermeer worked for, was essentially indentured as an artist to, Van Ruijven; and that is why Van Ruijven’s son in law’s estate had over twenty Vermeer originals put up for auction in 1696.

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The Second Restoration

This blog was started in 2006 as a joint project between my son and I – he wrote for a year or so and then moved on, leaving it to me. I found it a nice outlet. Each morning my mind is awash in ideas, some even mildly interesting. So I kept at it, but did not understand how the concept of “blogging” had been captured by the two parties and was being used as a mechanism to keep the herds inside the fences. To my dismay I was removed from the links of party-affiliated blogs and banned from commenting. My manners were less harsh and my insight far better than people who remained loyal to the parties. Still, isolated and ignored in all the right places, I kept at it. It was something to do.

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Vermeer the Forger, Part Two

Pieter van Ruijven (1624-1674) loaned Vermeer two hundred guilders on or about 1657. There is no certainty as to why but I will construct an unverifiable narrative that breaks no laws of the physical universe nor confounds human nature within the context of the threadbare facts known of these two men’s lives. Van Ruijven had money; not massive amounts, but investment money. He played angles, something of a gambler, but a reasonably legit business man for the most part. One of his financial concerns was art dealership. The laws of the land forbade van Ruijven from actually dealing in art. The kind of man he sought out to front for him was financially brittle, with many mouths to feed and open to turning what skills and access he had to broader opportunities. This of course was Vermeer, guild member and legal art dealer. So too, he could handle a brush. The pairing allowed for van Ruijven to gain access to paintings and for Vermeer to exercise his photographically accurate rendering skills to copy said paintings.

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The execution of Nguyễn Văn Lém: Another Famous Photo is fake

vietna-execution-offical-photoWarning to readers: Below the fold are some gruesome photos of an alleged execution of a young Vietnamese boy in 1968, the famous Saigon Execution photo by famous war photographer Eddie Adams. I am convinced it was faked, and so have no problem showing both it and a related film clip of the incident. If you are squeamish about blood, be warned, read no further. If you do, take comfort, as it is fake blood.

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Vermeer the Forger (?)

Vermeer the Forger- Part One

(As a change of pace, I want to post a short six part series that I had previously posted several years ago when attempting a second blog. Perhaps a half dozen bots and a couple of stumble-upons were exposed to this, so it is still, relatively speaking, factory fresh. I feel it is germane to the ongoing discussions here at POM as it is an exercise in clear-eyed interpretation of imagery. It concerns the output of the Dutch master, Johannes Vermeer, whose paintings are the most sought after across all of planet Earth, though I am at a loss as to why.)

This has bothered me for a long time and so I am finally going to try and put this somewhere other than my head. Guided by a generally agreed upon chronology, I will use the paintings as a stepping stone to get a handle on how Johannes Vermeer of Delft, Holland (1632-1675) managed to feed ten surviving children, a wife and a mother-in-law on thirty some odd paintings, almost none of which sold while he was alive.
A few basic facts: Vermeer’s mother in law, Maria Thins, an assumed source for most of the household revenue, was not as wealthy as most claim. She owned rented farmland that did yield some steady income. She was Catholic and so restrained to a degree inside Protestant Holland. The fact that several debts were outstanding at Vermeer’s death strongly suggests that the family, at best, had decent credit. The fact remains that Vermeer was in need of work and that he possessed one marketable skill: The ability to render objects and persons, as well as preexisting paintings by others, with remarkable accuracy.
Developing a Technique

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OPEC: Another public hoax

OPEC meets on December 10 in Vienna. World oil output to be curtailed.

My career was as a CPA serving oil and gas clients, among other things. The industry has had a shakeout these last couple of years, and many individual investors have sold their holdings, fulfilling the market dictum for all unsophisticated non-insiders:

Buy high, sell low.

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