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Presented below is a brief photo-travelog of a trip in 2010 when Christina and I visited Paris, Tuscany, Liguria, and Switzerland. Scrolling farther down, some poems are presented for your consideration, and an introduction to Moonlight Publications (1974-1996) which what's-his-name founded and served as editor and publisher. |
April in Paris Standing in awe of civilization’s power splayed across the landscape, I turned and looked behind for the view's view.
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Floor in the royal chambers at Château de Versailles, trod by kings and queens, ambassadors and generals, servants, revolutionaries, signers of treaties, and busloads of rabble.
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Museums in Paris This image is detail from one of Claude Monet’s expansive paintings of water lilies on display in Musée de l'Orangerie. When he painted these incredible murals, Monet was in his 80s and suffering from cataracts. When he raised his brush, Monet was the same distance from his waterscape canvas as the maintenance workers painting the puddling iron lattice of the Eiffel Tower. Monet enjoyed a stronger palette. |
This image of a wall in the Centre Georges Pompidou shows the shadow of a free-turning mobile sculpture by Alexander Calder. This visual junction of Twentieth Century art holds the corner of a Miró painting near the shadows of Calder's mobile artwork. Calder began his career as a hydraulics engineer. Joan Miró trained as an accountant. Had they not pursued their artistic callings, one can only wonder what great accomplishments they might have bestowed, giving a dam here and taking a tax break there. |
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Tuscany Here stands part of the castle wall in Montebenchi, a hilltop walled village in northern Italy. Misplaced between the warring armies of regional city-states and their European allies, the castle withstood countless attacks. Ten centuries ago, a battle at the castle ended with the slaughter of all two hundred local men and boys who died at the hands of the army from Siena. History affords the pleasure of reflection without the ghastliness of being there. Travel affords the pleasure of being there, without the ghastliness of full comprehension. |
Siena These paving stones stretch across the Piazza del Campo in central Siena. Upon this ground have walked forty generations of the people who descended from the founders of the world’s first constitutional secular government, six centuries before the founding of the United States of America.
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Florence Darth visited Ponte Vecchio. The bridges over the Arno River have endured waves of invaders, from the Romans to the tourist-warriors of the Twenty-First Century. Darth Vader is different, a pandemic cultural flu of the genus Entertainus.
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Michelangelo’s marble "David" stands tall in the Accademia di Belle Arti. This photo captures walls in the room with the famous sculpture. If David looked to his left, he'd see this corner. The image is minimalist, infused with elements of neoclassical and modernist traditions. |
Liguria An ancient foot trail connects the five coastal towns of Cinque Terra along and above the Ligurian Sea. Trail views like the cliff-perched town of Vernazza provide connections with a long history of human endurance and environmental sustainability. There's hope. |
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Lake Geneva While guards plodded the planks of this towering keep, many stories below, prisoners languished in the dungeon. The most famous was François Bonivard, immortalized in Lord Byron’s The Prisoner of Chillon. Each was plagued with too much marriage, debt, and history. Yet there's still hope, maybe more than before. Next installment: Mexico Diary.
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Poetry Here are some poems written by Fred Laughter, speaking now inexplicably in the third-person. The intent of the first two poems remains to advance an original poetic style based on two voices, speaking separately, which can also be read together as a third voice, the narrator's, or more succinctly, the observer's.
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Moonlight Publications: First Editions, First Printings Moonlight Publications was founded by Fred Laughter in Falls Church, Virginia in 1974, and continued publishing intermittently across three decades after moving to La Jolla, California in 1975. Moonlight's imprint was inspired by the writing of Wordsworth, after a night hike to Mount Blanc, which inspired him to recognize that the sun provides brilliance, while the moon represents reflection. Moonlight Publications produced short-run limited editions of paperback books of original poetry, short fiction and black-and-white reproducible photographic images. The number of copies ranged from 100 to 750 copies per title. Contributors were paid generously in copies, and more copies were given away, to reviewers, readers and poetry organizations. Limited commercial distribution was accomplished through independent bookstores in Southern California. A direct-mail campaign undertaken in 1980 resulted in the sale of one (count 'em, one) full set of all-titles-to-date, sold for $75 to the New York City Library, Special Collections Dept. It's fair to say that Moonlight glowed dimly as a commercial enterprise. A few boxes remain of these uncirculated collectibles: first editions, first printings. In the near future, these books will be made available to collectors, with proceeds from book sales dedicated to funding the further development of GreenAwakening.com. |
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