Archives for June 2005

I just broke one of my cardinal rules for leaving a message on voicemail. I babbled, rambled and upon my realization that I was rambling and babbling tried to correct my mistake, but probably just compounded it.

In the course of the business day I may make anywhere from 15-50 calls, so if I am not careful I begin to sound like I am reading from a script. To me that is not any better than babbling and rambling.

Is it just me or does Babbling and Rambling sound like it could be the title of something. Perhaps that will be the title of my first book, or if I ever become a syndicated columnist that could be the title of my column. Or maybe when they make a movie about my life it could work as the title of the movie.

I should add that I am not sure that I want anyone to make a movie about my life. It would be so odd, so strange, not to mention that I am not sure who I would want to play me. Sometimes I see Bruce Willis or John Travolta. If I could pick anyone it might be Humphrey Bogart, but then again I am not sure if any of them would be any sort of fit.

With my luck it would probably end up being Curtis Armstrong. Maybe I’ll ask the Shmata Queen to weigh in on this and we’ll see what she has to say about it.

And there you have it, I am Babbling and Rambling again. The point of this post was to chastise myself for leaving a lame message. How can I expect anyone to return my call if I leave something so silly, so foolish and so uninteresting.

Oh the shame of it all.

This evening the younger, smarter version of myself and I spent time discussing camp. Tomorrow will be his first day and he is understandably a little nervous about it. I felt a bit like a hypocrite telling him that it would be fine when I am nervous too.

I really am sure that it will be fine, most of his friends are going there too, but I can’t help it. He is only 4.5, so I am a little nervous, probably more than he is.

Yes, Fragments of Fiction was until just a few moments ago sitting here on this blog as opposed to the adjunct. However at around 20,000 words it was making the template crash so I had to pull it off of here for now.

This is a cool story.

“ROME – “Cerca, trova” — seek and you shall find — says a tantalizing five-century-old message painted on a fresco in the council hall of Florence’s Palazzo Vecchio.

Researchers now believe these cryptic words could be a clue to the location of a long-lost Leonardo da Vinci painting and are pressing local authorities to allow them to search for the masterpiece of Renaissance art.

Maurizio Seracini, an Italian art researcher, first noticed the message during a survey of the hall 30 years ago, but his team lacked the technology then to see what lay behind Giorgio Vasari’s 16th-century fresco, “Battle of Marciano in the Chiana Valley.”

However, radar and X-ray scans conducted between 2002 and 2003 have detected a cavity behind the section of wall the message was painted on, which Seracini believes may conceal Leonardo’s unfinished mural painting, the “Battle of Anghiari.”

Considered one of Leonardo’s greatest works, the mural is known today through the Tuscan master’s preparatory studies and copies made by other artists.

“At the time, this was considered the masterpiece of masterpieces,” Seracini told the Associated Press. Recovering it “would be like discovering a new Mona Lisa or a new Last Supper.”

Leonardo’s mural was thought to have been destroyed in the mid-16th century when artist, writer and architect Vasari renovated the hall that once served as Florence’s seat of power. He then covered the walls with his own paintings.”

So now you are asking yourself, what is going on here, what is the real story.

“Leonardo later abandoned the work and left for Milan. Some chroniclers of the time said the artist had experimented with unstable paints that had rapidly degraded, leaving the painting irreparably damaged.

“For generations these stories have held us back, but there are documents that say otherwise,” Seracini said. “Maybe other parts were damaged, but we know that 60 years later, when Vasari began his works, the painting was still visible and people still came to marvel at it.”

Vasari raised the hall’s roof 23 feet by building a second set of walls, but scans show that at one point he left a space between the two walls that is just large enough to house Leonardo’s 19-by-13-foot “Fight for the Flag,” Seracini said.

A similar technique was used by Vasari to preserve other works of art, he said.

“We see from Vasari’s writings that Leonardo was just too important to him,” Seracini said, adding that Vasari himself may have painted the message on a tiny green flag in his 39-by-26-foot fresco as a clue to the location of the “Battle of Anghiari.”

“It is the only writing on dozens of flags in that painting,” Seracini said. “And what are we looking for if not for something which was already known then as the ‘Fight for the Flag’? Can all this be a coincidence?”

Seracini, whose research on another Leonardo painting is quoted in Dan Brown’s novel “The Da Vinci Code,” is an engineer who has spent the last three decades conducting scientific investigations on art treasures. He said he would like to continue his search for the “Battle of Anghiari” but authorities in Florence have denied him a permit.

“For months now we have been at a standstill and since all this is paid for by a private company, at no cost to the municipality, it’s difficult for me to understand the reason for this behavior,” he said.

Chiara Silla, director of the Palazzo Vecchio museum, said the inquiry hasn’t been given the go-ahead because Seracini has yet to present a detailed report on his survey.

“Seracini’s is a work in progress that is difficult to evaluate,” Silla said. “For the last two years we have been waiting for technical and scientific documentation to decide together whether to continue or not.”

If authorized to resume, Seracini said he would conduct another series of scans and insert a small probe through Vasari’s painting to detect any traces of the pigments used by Leonardo. That would require at least another year of work, he said.”

Someone give me my Fedora, it is time to play Indiana Jones.

I consider myself to have been very lucky as I have had a life in which I have enjoyed many different experiences, been to different places and lived well. I am not from a wealthy family, nor am I rich, although some people might consider me to be.

But I am smart enough to recognize that I have been given certain advantages that others have not been granted and I am appreciative of them.

However I would be lying if I suggested that I am always satisfied with life or that there haven’t been times when I have been less than content with myself and what I have. It is something that most of us have experienced more than once, a place in which you try to be happy, but it is hard not to look at someone else and think “why can’t I have that.”

In my case the center of my frustration and desire has long surrounded my own dysfunctional digestive system. It would be nice to experience life as I once did, able to eat without concern about the outcome. A place where I didn’t spend time considering what a certain food might do to me and whether it could prevent my enjoying the day. A time in which I felt like a normal person. But that is not how life works and though I have tried many different products none have yet produced the results that I seek and that troubles me.

And as long as I am kvetching I’d like to add something else to the list. I am good at most things I try. I am a solid athlete, good at my job, not bad at this and that and generally smart enough to figure things out. But sometimes it is just not enough for me, it is just frustrating that I cannot hit that higher level.

It is like looking at various areas of mathematics. I get to a place in which I just cannot follow along any more. For that matter it is like that in a lot of things for me. What comes to mind is the scene in Field of Dreams in which Terence Mann(James Earl Jones heads into the cornfield with Shoeless Joe Jackson and the other ballplayers. When Ray Kinsell (Kevin Costner) tries to follow he is told he is not invited, too bad.

From a religious standpoint you could say that it is like Moshe Rabeinu looking out over the promised land. “Hey Mo, take a look at what you are missing out on. Sorry you can’t join us, but it is just not for you.”

Since I am a crusty old guy I have to apply the same standards to myself as I do to everyone else and say, “what are you going to do about it?”

The answer is that I am going to do the same thing that I always do. I am going to keep on plugging away and live. What else can you do. I am not going to lie down and die, but I am not going to not complain about this from time to time.

I know that I sound like a bit of a whiner, but I think that the thing that really gets me is those areas in which I can feel myself on the edge, the place where it moves from good to great. From an intellectual standpoint it sometimes drives me crazy to be a part of a conversation where I realize that I am just not smart enough to keep up, the place where I can understand bits and pieces but not the whole concept.

That just makes me nuts, it is almost better not to understand anything. Oh well, it could always be worse.

One more comment before my children drag me away for more Father’s Day activities. I am still a firm believer in hard work as being a solution for overcoming some of these challenges. It is possible to get to that upper level I seek, the question is how hard are you willing to work at it.

Happy Father’s Day. See you later.

I am starting to get a little stir crazy which is not saying much because as most people know crazy and I are well acquainted. But the real source of my agitation right now is the lack of time here at my computer.

It is one thing when it is your choice not to be here, but this weekend that has most definitely not been the case. I don’t like being this busy and hope to get back on here tonight.

Got to run for now.