« March 19, 2023 - March 25, 2023 | Main | April 02, 2023 - April 08, 2023 »
April 01, 2023
Cummer.
I've mentioned the small but elegant Cummer Art Museum and Gardens here sporadically, usually in connection with a particularly famous piece in its admired collection. Other times you saw older photos of its founders taken in the early 1900s. I'll give the Cummer its due at some point.
For now? The Cummer was once the home of my mother's Aunt Nina Holden Cummer in central Jacksonville, Florida. It was built in 1904 by Nina and her husband Arthur on 2.5 acres on the St. Johns River. The couple began buying art almost immediately after moving in. Arthur died in 1943. After his death, Nina continued the acquisitions, slowly and studiously expanding and diversifying the collection. Parts of it now date back to 2000 BC.
"Aunt Nina" lived at what is now the Museum until her death in 1957. My parents spent the night before their wedding here in July 1950. There are now some 6000 objects in the collection. The gardens date back to the original gardens built to complement the house. The Cummer continues to grow its collection. It attracts about 130,000 visitors a year.
Posted by JD Hull at 09:15 AM | Comments (0)
March 31, 2023
Pieter Brueghel the Younger, The People's Lawyer, 1615-17
Posted by JD Hull at 11:48 PM | Comments (0)
TJ O’Hara gets January 6 right.
“John Daniel Hull, IV, founder and partner of the D.C. law firm of Hull McQuire PC, joins T.J. O’Hara, host of Deconstructed, to share his political experiences and observations from inside the Beltway. Mr. Hull is a distinguished attorney who, as a Democrat, served as a Legislative Assistant to a congressional Republican before beginning his career as a litigating attorney.
In recent years, his political affiliation has shifted to a more conservative point of view, and he explains what drove his change of heart. He cites the tenor of the media in Washington, D.C. and how it has impacted the way with which events and individuals are often portrayed.
Mr. Hull describes the similarities and differences he personally observed in the Black Lives Matter protests he attended as well as the January 6th rally that served as a precursor to the insurrection at the Capitol later that day. His observations of the attendees and some of the groups that drove the behavior of the crowds are quite interesting in each case. As a former journalist, his “takeaways” are quite compelling.
Then, Mr. Hull does a “deep dive” into “free speech” differentiating the actual element of that phrase and its misplaced use. T.J. quizzes him on “freedom of the press” as well, and he dissects that issue as well.
From Antifa to the Proud Boys, Mr. Hull has had an opportunity to directly observe the behaviors of both and the aftermaths of their actions. He describes what the media reported relative to the facts versus the impact of any partisan spin on national perspectives. Learn how an actual observer evaluates the actions he saw, the people he met, and the way each was presented to the public. Some may be in complete alignment with what you might suspect. Others may stun you with what the genuine details reveal… particularly with respect to the law.
Leave your political biases at the door and enter the world of someone who lives in D.C. and regularly experiences history as it occurs. Then, ask why this isn’t what you may have read or seen from either side of the aisle.”
Posted by JD Hull at 06:25 PM | Comments (0)
March 28, 2023
Benjamin Disraeli: On Bad Books.
Books are fatal: they are the curse of the human race. Nine-tenths of existing books are nonsense, and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense.
--Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)
"Dizzy"
Posted by JD Hull at 11:35 PM | Comments (0)
Av. Winston-Churchill, 8th Arrondissement
Below is a photo by Clear Blue Sky of the Winston Churchill statue in Paris. In 1998, it was erected and unveiled just outside the Petit Palais. In bronze and by French sculptor Jean Cardot, it stands ten feet high and weighs about 2.5 tons. Cardot modeled it on a photograph taken on November 11, 1944 of Churchill marching down the nearby Champs Elysees with General Charles de Gaulle.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 08:59 PM | Comments (0)
March 26, 2023
Encore: Dude, where's my Congress?
Ideology is a uniquely unhelpful way to get anything done.
When years ago I worked on Capitol Hill, no one seemed to hate you because you thought differently. No one got emotional because you were an R or a D. That has changed. I'm frequently in House or Senate Committee meetings and hearings these days for clients on IP, environmental, infrastructure and judiciary issues. Mostly Rayburn HOB. Some days Dirksen SOB. About half of these events are showcases--GOP showcases, these days--for strutting the majority's stuff, ideological posturing and poorly concealed anti-Obama rhetoric or overtures, both express and implied. Frankly, I can see Ds doing the same thing in one or two possible future Congresses; give them some time to catch up. I don't always love my President but I don't think he's Satan, either. Sometimes I'm in Russell SOB, where years ago I had my first job involving a chair, desk and telephone. I followed Sen. Kennedy's Health subcommittee around. I was amazed how people tried to get along in bill mark-ups and hearings. I was proud to be there in the same room. Around 1980, things became personal with many. Ideology is a uniquely unhelpful way to get anything done. Refusal to compromise sounds good but it's better reserved for ancient epic yarns.
Mending Wall (1915)
By Robert Frost
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was likely to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."
Dirksen Senate Office Building (SOB) Committee Room 226.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:25 AM | Comments (0)