Sila Blume
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The photographer-photograph-viewer divergence
For a few weeks I have been looking at the same mountains. Clouds, contrast, fog, lighting, all attribute perpetual changes of the same mountains to the eye. In April, it rains daily. It shines, daily. It is foggy, daily. The forecast can interrupt itself any minute, many times, daily. It is the rainy season, though…
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Yehudi Menuhin *IV 22 1916 — The Life You Give
Yehudi Menuhin, Lord Menuhin of Stoke d’Abernon, born April 22, 1916, New York, New York, is considered one of the leading violin virtuosos of the 20th century. Menuhin grew up in San Francisco, where he studied violin from age four and where his performance of Felix Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto at age seven caused a sensation.…
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Ethel Smyth *IV 22 1858 — The Life You Give
Dame Ethel Smyth, born Ethel Mary Smyth, on April 22, 1858, in London, is the composer whose work was notably eclectic, ranging from conventional to experimental. Born into a military family, Smyth studied at the Leipzig Conservatory and was encouraged by Johannes Brahms and Antonín Dvořák. She first gained notice with her sweeping Mass in…
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God in Quito
Everyday, each time I go up and down the stairs, from my flat to the roof and back, I walk by her flat. One day, after watching Morgan Freeman playing god, she came out for a minute of fresh air, and saw me above her, on the edge of the roof. She jumped back, bringing…
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Dr. House Excerpts
Dr. House: Why do you trust me? Eve: I do not know H: That is not rational E; Nothing is rational H: Everything is rational E: … H: We are selfish, base animals crawling across the earth. But because we have got brains, if we try real hard, we can occasionally aspire to something that…
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Today’s baking
This is Quito, where everything bakes and cooks different. Hence the texture.
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Germaine Tailleferre *IV 19 1892 — The Life You Give
Of significance as the sole female member of the post-World War I group of French composers known as Les Six, Germaine Tailleferre remained a prominent — if somewhat inaccessible — musician long after the disintegration of that group during the middle and late 1920s. She left behind, at her death in 1983 at the age…
Sila Blume 