Thursday, August 26, 2010

Jeff Koons: a synedoche about pyschiatrists)

priests and pyschiatrists: are they dissimilar? yes, one wears a collar and the other doesn't; both do good
do both believe in a divine mission?
why did koons use that godawful green?
it is of "the moment," it does attract attetnion


in black and white: incontovertible truth

Saturday, August 21, 2010

Thursday, August 19, 2010

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

The Natural Ballerina in Mauve: recalling Stravinsky and Balanchine

the ballerina rejoices but she is not one of the wraiths that Balanchine favored

Monday, August 16, 2010

Paul Peter Rosen, MD: happy birthday big brother




Garnet Lake, New York, The Adirondacks, 1940s
Peter finds a tomato plant and tends it, extracting it from the wild grasses that had covered it up
Peter also loved fishing. Here he is, practicing, with his sister Susan Joan Rosen seated in another rowboat with her dearest friend T. B. What lovely days those were!
And a gift of a beautiful butterfly, Vanessa io

Saturday, August 14, 2010

The Dreamer: Green Park, London

Welcome Bess: her first walk at Tallman State Park, NY


all of our Scottish Terriers have hiked the paths of Tallman Sate Park, NY. Now our little Bess, follows in the footsteps of her "sisters" and "brothers": Kate, Fala, Aesop, and Emma. Nature was a wonder but then too were people and vehicles. She had sensorial excitement today!

The Last Dance

Saturday, August 7, 2010

"Youth" by W. S. Merwin



Through all of youth I was looking for you
without knowing what I was looking for

or what to call you I think I did not
even know I was looking how would I

have known you when I saw you as I did
time after time when you appeared to me

as you did naked offering yourself
entirely at that moment and you let

me breathe you touch you taste you knowing
no more than I did and only when I

began to think of losing you did I
recognize you when you were already

part memory part distance remaining
mine in the ways that I learn to miss you

from what we cannot hold the stars are made

The Shadow of Sirius
Copper Canyon Press
Port Townsend, Washington, 2009, p. 39

Thursday, August 5, 2010

Petrified, but transmuted into metal, not stone.


and now her blind eyes are encrusted with dirt and finely spun threads wind around her face


Charlecote, England: The River Avon or Natural Geometry

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

George Rosen: in memoriam. 2



George Rosen, photographed in Brooklyn, as a baby in 1910; my father's study in North Haven, Ct. 1977. He had laid out his papers to begin work when he returned from Europe. Tragically he never did. When my parents lived in New York, bookshelves lined the walls of 285 Riverside Drive, apt 2B, and so had more space to accomodate my father's library. My parents intended to expand the study, doubling or tripling the space, but this sadly never occurred.

George Rosen: in memorian, died 27 July 1977






My father George Rosen, MD, Ph.D., died 33 years ago in Oxford , England. It is in memory of my beloved parent that I wish to memorialize him, once again. Remarkable by any measure, the man, the author, the practitioner, the teacher, he exerted a deep and lasting influence on his generation and on the generation that was to follow his. As a parent he was loving and exacting, and gave both my brother, Paul Peter Rosen, M.D.,and myself a lasting love for the world, be it cultural experience, anthropological understanding, scientific curiosity and practice or innumerable other facets of knowledge: nothing seemed too small or too large to consider. How fortunate I was to be nurtured in this context. Books surrounded us and music from Dowland to Brecht with the MJQ and the Blues were staple fare. Lucky me. I vividly recall Balanchine's troupe at the City Center and Jose Limon at Barnard. My father's great love, his wife, my mother, Beate Caspari-Rosen shaped the welcoming atmosphere of the household. But it was a household that focused on work. In the evenings, after my parents returned from their busy day of teaching or practicing medecin:, my father wrote and my mother assisted him in his labors. We did not have a television set until the 1960s! But among my very earliest memories are visits to museums, and hikes in New York City and later in New York State and Maine.
Thirty-three years ," three decades and then some," and yet my father's presence is as vivid as ever. It is only his voice that I have difficulty recreating. But somewhere an archive must hold a recording of his voice .

My father was born in Brooklyn, New York and his parents may have been born in the Ukraine in Lvov. But I am uncertain. Since I inherited my father's curiosity and I am an historian, I hope to be able to piece together fragements and regain the past that vanishes into obscurity.
The photographs I have chosen do not follow an argument or a chronology, but they do show facets of his life: he gardened, he served in the military, voluntarily enlisting. Knowing at first hand the Nazi agenda, since he received his medical degree in Berlin during the rise of Hitler in the 1930s, he did not hesitate, despite the fact that he had two babies and a wife and family who depended upon him. Among his other duties was intelligence, medical intelligence to discover what was taking place in the concentration camps. Fluent in German and a physician, he interviewed German military charged with carrying out extermination and more.

Two pictures relate to that phase of his life. His teaching career began at Columbia University, The School of Public Health, now titled The Mailman School of Public Health (And to keep this post up to date, the institution where Chelsea Clinton received her doctoral degree.). In the 1960s , he went to Yale University, where he had a joint appointment , teaching the history of medicine and also courses Public Health.

People with his commitment to public health and who fought for it despite grave consequences are difficult to locate today. And his vast knowledge was brought to bare on the history of medicine. His work opened up mnumerous avenue for research and to this day his work still lives, I am thankful to report.
And now for the pictures:
Military Intelligence
Service form
Canterbury Ct, North Society Road, my parents. Schatzi our dachshund, myself and a friend
George Rosen tending the lilacs in Canterbury
Geroge Rosen seated at his desk, in his office at Columbia School of Public. Note objects on desk


George Rosen: in memoriam, July 27, 1977