Upcoming caricature gig

Yup, that’s me! I’m the caricaturist Ms Arendt mentions in this clip. On Saturday, September 10th I’ll be drawing caricatures at an elegant fundraiser— the Hospice of Jefferson County’s Masquerade Ball at the Harbor Hotel in Clayton, New York. My manager, Marie, will be on hand to keep my operation moving along smoothly! https://www.witn.com/video/2022/08/29/jefferson-county-hospice-masquerade-ball/

A few more caricatures from last weekend

Here’s a tiny handful of photos from my gig last weekend—the community event in Utica, New York.

Thanks again to Michael Purcell at A-1 Entertainment for hiring me!

Drawing faces

Last weekend I got to draw caricatures at a lovely community celebration in Utica, NY. Michael Purcell of A-1 Entertainment hired me and was kind enough to take this video—
https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPQZdqkj1hwhsH9lWRYZtWFELJZhHt6lsUTuIdHZKmo30C1EAo6X04tol4ZhdfcvQ?key=Sk9FSjJmVkNFR1pHOHlnV2VMb010TzczU05JN3hR

Here’s the couple holding their finished caricature:

If you’re looking for party and event vendors in central New York, give Mike a shout—A-1Entertainment.com

Rembrandt

The Hundred Guilder print

Side-note: One of my favorite artists, Rembrandt, was a boy in the Netherlands while the Pilgrims were there. When I was a new Sunday-school teacher, I joked that everything I knew about the Bible came from looking at Rembrandt paintings. A benefit of the Netherlands being a haven for religious minorities was that there was a Jewish quarter in Amsterdam. Rembrandt lived in and had friends there. He depicted Christ and the Holy Family as Jews (which they were, of course), using his friends as models. This was a departure from tradition. https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/rmbt/hd_rmbt.htm
Look at Christ’s hands in the Hundred Guilder print. Rembrandt drew with a steel stylus, cutting lines into a copper plate. Yeah, he could draw.

https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/1.5160992
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/371732

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Wait, there’s more!

Red brick & cobblestones on the street where the Pilgrims lived.

Adding to the Pilgrims’ worries: Leiden’s corrupt city government was beginning to fall apart. A barricade was built around city hall and protected by soldiers. There was mob rule in the streets and the mob had become not-so-tolerant of religions from other countries (at least one Pilgrim was beaten senseless on his way home from church). To top it off, the Pilgrims were farmers trying to adapt to city life. The main way to earn a living in Leiden was to work in the cloth mills. You could make a decent buck while you’re young, but the old guys didn’t work as fast and so brought home less money. They couldn’t get ahead or get out of debt.

The Pilgrims started looking around for someplace else to set up shop.

Here are links to cover this week’s posts:
https://atdspain.com/en/news/how-was-netherlands-part-spanish-empire
https://www.britannica.com/place/Spanish-Netherlands
https://americanliteraturechallenge.wordpress.com/2012/01/23/why-did-the-puritans-leave-holland-were-their-reasons-justified-2/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvinism
https://netherlandsinsiders.com/discover-the-pilgrims-legacy-in-leiden-their-home-from-1609-1620/
https://www.saburchill.com/history/events/009.html
https://leidenamericanpilgrimmuseum.org/en/page/pilgrim-life-in-leiden-why-the-pilgrims-left
https://www.lakenhal.nl/en/story/leiden-cloth

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I’ve been Apple Festivaling

Two apple festivals on two weekends! I had a blast drawing caricatures and am grateful to everyone who sat for one.

Edward Gibbon, 1737 – 1794

 Edward Gibbon published The Decline and Fall in 1776

Edward Gibbon tells the whole sad story in his fascinating six-volume book, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. I do recommend it. It’s not for everybody. You probably want to wait until you’re a senior in high school to read it. You need to be a reader who really enjoys reading—it takes a little while to catch on to the rhythm of Gibbon’s writing and the slightly different meanings of some words written two and a half centuries ago. Once you manage that, I promise it’ll be a rewarding experience. It will also be a horrifying experience if you pay attention to what our own idiot political & cultural elites are up to. Having read Gibbon, you’ll view each day’s top news stories with mounting panic and maybe do something drastic like start writing a history blog.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19400.The_Decline_and_Fall_of_the_Roman_Empire
Decline and Fall is available in an abridged (shortened) version, which is the one I read: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/59496/the-decline-and-fall-of-the-roman-empire-by-edward-gibbon/
and in audio: https://www.audiobooks.com/audiobook/decline-and-fall-of-the-roman-empire-vol-i/244636 It costs 40 bucks so check with your librarian to see if you can borrow it. Librarians are helpful people and can save you a buttload of cash.
A thoughtful entry by a Wiki editor—worth the read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_History_of_the_Decline_and_Fall_of_the_Roman_Empire

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The sack of Rome

Alaric and the Visigoths sack Rome in ad 410

Welp, once again I’ve gotten ahead of myself by focusing with laser intensity on a single subject: how Romance languages were born from Latin. I think we should back up a bit and look at the big picture.

The big picture is: the Roman Empire had gotten too big. It was really difficult for one guy to manage. At its startup, the Empire had Augustus and then the 5 ‘good’ emperors who had the necessary skills to run the show. After that, there was a slow decline brought on by corruption, everybody-in-the-government’s lust for power, political instability, mismanagement of the economy (debasement of currency), over-reliance on a work-for-hire military, use of slave labor, religious intolerance, weak morals, and the ever-present threat of invasion from kingdoms and tribes at the Empire’s borders. Those tribes sacked the city of Rome in ad 410 and by 476 the Empire was over. I’m speaking of the western half of the Empire. The eastern Byzantine half carried on after the western half’s fall for a thousand more years.

https://www.ancient.eu/Western_Roman_Empire/
https://www.ancient.eu/article/835/fall-of-the-western-roman-empire/
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2018-05-29/new-data-reveal-the-hidden-mechanisms-of-the-collapse-of-the-roman-empire/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sack_of_Rome_(410)

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Today’s post is brought to you by the letters I, J, U, V, W and Y.

The Volkswagen—my first car

Want more? The letter J eventually replaced I as a consonant and is pronounced Y. Before that, Jesus (Joshua/Yeshua in Hebrew) was IESVS in Latin and pronounced YEH-zoos (the V is a vowel: U). When Pontius Pilate had ‘INRI’ posted on the Cross it was short for: Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudæorum—Jesus the Nazarene, King of the Jews (it was meant to mock Him). Which reminds me: in Spain they pronounce J and soft G as H: Jesus=hay-ZOOS or Julio=HOO-lee-o or George/Jorge=HOR-hay. J replaced Y, too. G-d’s name, YHWH eventually got vowels and became Jehovah—because when W was added to the Latin alphabet people couldn’t decide whether to pronounce it W or V. In Italy, they pronounce V and W at the same time—vincere=VWIN-che-reh. In Germany, Vs are Ws or Fs. They pronounce the name of their own car, designed in Germany for Germans, the Volkswagen, as ‘FOLKS-vagen.*’ The Austrian town of Vienna and the sausage made there is pronounced ‘WEE-ner’—think ‘wiener schnitzel.’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-OQojS_aVw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLLQz78w6Bo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jehovah
Your one-stop shop for canned Vienna sausage:
https://www.amazon.com/Libbys-Vienna-Sausage-4-6-oz/dp/B01NGZ050U/ref=asc_df_B01NGZ050U/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=416696927952&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=6906383959846779699&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9005171&hvtargid=pla-871853311415&psc=1&tag=&ref=&adgrpid=93865725557&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvadid=416696927952&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=6906383959846779699&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9005171&hvtargid=pla-871853311415
https://www.thespruceeats.com/wiener-schnitzel-recipe-1447089

Check the comments in the previous post for a Jim F’s list of Letters With Multiple Pronunciations!

* Thanks for the pronunciation help, Heidi K!

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Today’s post is brought to you by the letter C

A chivalrous caballero chanting a sea-shanty

Not only did P get pronounced F in the Roman Empire’s northerly boondocks, C stopped being K and got softened to CH or S. In Germany Caesar is still Kaizer but in the British Isles (and so in North America) it’s pronounced SEE-zer. Over in Russia it got shortened to Czar. Even in Italy the name became Cesare (CHEZ-a-ray). Chalk and calcium mean sort of the same thing but which of those sounds is the real C? A song is a canto or a chanson or a chant or a shanty. In a card store you can buy paper to draw a chart on. A caballero can be chivalrous or cavalier—all 3 words are about guys who ride horses. Which reminds me: in Spain they harden V to B.

Can you think of any more?

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