Category: Photos & Art

More Edith Cullen Shain

VJ Day Kiss

Edith Cullen Shain is the nurse in the famous Alfred Eisenstaedt photo V-J Day in Times Square taken 62 years ago today. She kept her identity secret for 34 years, then identified herself to Eisenstaedt and he confirmed it was her when they met.

From an interview two years ago:

“The street was just wild with people. It was exuberant. They were dashing around and hugging and kissing and we walked in on that. And a sailor grabbed me and held me and kissed me a long time.

“When he grabbed me, I didn’t see him, and when he kissed me, I didn’t see him because I closed my eyes. And then I turned around and walked the other way, and so that was the end of the story as far as the recognition is concerned,” she said.

Shain later became a school teacher in California where she married and had three children.

Sixty years later, Shain, who says she was kissed by only one sailor that day, still has no idea who the sailor was. More than 20 men have come forward through the years claiming to be the kisser but none has ever been confirmed.

A statue in Times Square commemorates the moment. It’s called “Unconditional Surrender.”

Click image for larger version of the original photo.

Moonbows

From the Los Angeles Times, Beauty in the misty moonlight. It begins:

YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK — Aristotle took note of this celestial happening a couple of millenniums back. Ben Franklin bagged a sighting or two, as did Mark Twain. The venerable John Muir, chronicler of Sierra mountaintop and meadow, waxed enthusiastic about the nighttime phenomenon.

The hunt for the elusive “moonbow” has long been a nocturnal lure for dreamy hikers, insomniac seamen and intrepid photo buffs. But in the past, seeing one of these nighttime rainbows — caused when a full moon’s rays bounce off the mist of a departing rain cloud or raging waterfall — has been dictated mostly by chance.

No longer.

Quacks me up

Amusing photo.

And this, amazing photo.

Meanwhile:

An angry Romanian doctor has cut off a patient’s penis during surgery and chopped it into small pieces.

Surgeon Naum Ciomu was operating on patient Nelu Radonescu, 36, to correct a testicular malformation when he suddenly lost his temper.

Grabbing a scalpel, he sliced off the penis in front of shocked nursing staff, and then placed it on the operating table where he chopped it into small pieces before storming out of the operating theatre at Bucharest hospital.

AOL Lifestyle

Couldn’t he have just counted to ten? Great plot for Grey’s Anatomy, though, especially if the victim is one of those asinine male doctors. Karev, Shepherd or O’Malley, any will do.

Some good advice:

1. Styrofoam cups
Styrofoam is forever. It’s not biodegradable.
* I can’t remember the last time I used a styrofoam cup but for all those takeaway coffee drinkers, it’s worth finding an alternative.

2. Paper towels
Paper towels waste forest resources, landfill space, and your money.
* I couldn’t imagine going without paper towels. I do buy the eco friendly variety but I should probably use old clothes or towels to clean up.

3. Bleached coffee filters
Dioxins, chemicals formed during the chlorine bleaching process, contaminate groundwater and air and are linked to cancer in humans and animals.
* I’m not a coffee drinker which looks to be a good thing if this is what is used to make coffee.

Top 10 Products to Avoid | Buy Organic

And:

Want to stay safe on the roads? Then avoid listening to Guns N Roses, Meat Loaf and Bruce Springsteen behind the wheel.

The trio are among the artists featured on a top 10 of tracks that get people’s blood pumping and in the mood to drive aggressively.
. . .

It includes classic rock tracks, such as Meat Loaf’s “Bat Out Of Hell” and Springsteen’s “Born to Run,” as well as tracks such as Motorhead’s “Ace of Spades” and Guns N Roses’ “Paradise City.”

Reuters via Yahoo! News

Ansel Adams

… was born on this date in 1902.

In a career that spanned more than 50 years, Mr. Adams combined a passion for natural landscape, meticulous craftsmanship as a printmaker and a missionary’s zeal for his medium to become the most widely exhibited and recognized photographer of his generation.

His photographs have been published in more than 35 books and portfolios, and they have been seen in hundreds of exhibitions, including a one-man show, ”Ansel Adams and the West,” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1979. That same year he was the subject of a cover story in Time magazine, and in 1980 he received the Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.

In addition to being acclaimed for his dramatic landscapes of the American West, he was held in esteem for his contributions to photographic technology and to the recognition of photography as an art form.

The New York Times Obituary

The Ansel Adams Gallery

Photo tip

Rule of thumb to avoid photographing people with their eyes closed: divide the number of people by three (or by two if the light is bad). That means that if you’re taking a photo of 12 people, you need to take at least 4 photos to have a good chance of getting a photo with everyone’s eyes open.

kottke.org

All the news that fits

Not to shill for The New York Times, but . . .

First, a best line from David Carr writing about Monday night’s Golden Globes:

“The Queen” might not have taken home gold for best picture, but its star, Helen Mirren, had enough hardware at the end of the night that she looked as if she’d spent time at Home Depot.

An article on some beautiful pencil and paper drawings by Monet.

David Leonhardt on the cost of a mistake:

For starters, $1.2 trillion would pay for an unprecedented public health campaign — a doubling of cancer research funding, treatment for every American whose diabetes or heart disease is now going unmanaged and a global immunization campaign to save millions of children’s lives.

Combined, the cost of running those programs for a decade wouldn’t use up even half our money pot. So we could then turn to poverty and education, starting with universal preschool for every 3- and 4-year-old child across the country. The city of New Orleans could also receive a huge increase in reconstruction funds.

The final big chunk of the money could go to national security. The recommendations of the 9/11 Commission that have not been put in place — better baggage and cargo screening, stronger measures against nuclear proliferation — could be enacted. Financing for the war in Afghanistan could be increased to beat back the Taliban’s recent gains, and a peacekeeping force could put a stop to the genocide in Darfur.

All that would be one way to spend $1.2 trillion. Here would be another:

The war in Iraq.

And Selena Roberts has an interesting assessment of Michelle Wie, though this one is behind the Times Select wall.