Lost Caravaggio Found

[click on image to enlarge]

The Taking of Christ (1603) - Michelangelo Caravaggio

(artist's self-portrait holding lamp extreme right corner)



Here is the story of how this lost Caravaggio was found: The Taking of Christ.

A Post Card from San Diego's Black Beach

Cactus grows leeward.

Naked bodies lie
random and sexless as birds
while the ocean's yeasty arms rush my shoes.

Five pelicans ascend with
the cliff's quick lift
into the child's idea of a squadron.

A pair of Navy jets erupt like steam from a cappuccino machine
heading out low over the Pacific;
wing tips nearly touch like sprinting lovers.

poem - J. Freed

Fafnir, the Dragon Metaphor

Wagner's Siegfried Kills the Dragon, Fafnir

by Arthur Rackham

Siegfried kills Fafnir, the man transmogrified by his selfish greed into the hideous guarding dragon, and liberates the wealth of the gods so that it gets re-distributed freely to his tribe. The poet of Beowulf narrates a similar story.

In our modern rendition, for “Siegfried/Beowulf” read “you, me and Google."

For greedy "dragons" read "textbook publishers and movie production companies."

For "wealth” read “open access intellectual and artistic works” from such sites as Art Museum Networks of the World, Internet Archive and the myriad of others that I will post in future blogs.

photo - J. Freed

Michelangelo's Modern Man

HAMLET: O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.

taken from the very "best" open-access resource for this and all of Shakespeare's plays -- http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/views/plays/play_view.php?WorkID=hamlet&Scope=entire&pleasewait=1&msg=pl.

Caution: Critical Thinking May Be Hazardous to Your Patriotism.

photo - J. Freed

[click on image to enlarge]

Warming Hut -- Golden Gate Bridge

College Teaching in the Universe of Web 2.0



1. Listen to the speech, “Goodbye, Textbooks. Hello, Open-Source Learning,” given by Richard Baraniuk, a Rice University Professor, at the 2006 TED Conference in Monterey, CA:



http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/25.



2. Exemplar Extraordinaire: Conducting Historical Research: The Case of "Oriental Cairo":


Start »


Summary: This course guides you through how to conduct historical research by conducting a case study on Douglas Sladen's "Oriental Cairo: City of the 'Arabian Nights'" (1911), a work included in the Travelers in the Middle East Archive (TIMEA). It introduces some standard research techniques used by historians, such as establishing a subject's biography and placing a work in context, and it also explores how to use library resources such as online catalogs and databases.

Rice University instructors and course web page: David Getman and Paula Sanders: Course Web page.

James' Faith

video - Stacy Alexander

My Friend James

I have my students carefully listen to and transcribe what James has to say in this video and answer the question whether he or they have a greater "faith in the Lord."

Jesus - homeless and

content - on the street

Oakland, California.

poem - J. Freed