School for Seduction

Guiding Maine

Maine culture is steeped in tradition, especially its water culture. This is a video from Yankee Magazine of my friend's father in law and his experience as a Guide.

The Gerson Therapy: A Beautiful Truth

Farmer's Market: Ventura, CA

Renaissance Beauty

The Renaissance marked an era in Europe when beauty in art and literature were at the forefront of new ideas... launching an educational revolution, a deviation from the Middle Ages, and a revolution of physical beauty. 

Affluent women perched beneath the sun for hours letting dyes made from onion skins, sulfur, alum, and saffron turn their hair a brighter shade of blonde.  They tirelessly and painfully plucked and threaded their hairline to elude a wider, higher forehead (or a "five-head" as Tyra Banks likes to call it).  The women of France and Italy would go to great measures for beauty, mixing powders from cinnabar (vermilion), white lead, and mercury to dust their skin a creamy shade of ivory.  Eyebrows were pale and thin.  The women of the Renaissance proudly boasted a fuller figure… it was seen as a gift from God.  There was a certain sensuality of the Renaissance, delicate faces and soft bodies; summed up through the eyes of the greats that encapsulated the understated beauty of 15th Century European women.  "Human subtlety will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does Nature, because in her inventions, nothing is lacking and nothing is superfluous." - Leonardo Da Vinci

Beautiful, darlings.

 Edie Sedgwick and Candy Darling, two of Andy Warhol's morning glory Factory Girls. 

Congratulations Will & Kate

Sealed with a kiss...  and another.

The Swallows Come Back March 19th

The miracle of the "Swallows" of Capistrano takes place each year at the Mission San Juan Capistano, on March 19th, St. Joseph's Day.

As the little birds wing their way back to the most famous Mission in California, the village of San Juan Capistrano takes on a fiesta air and the visitors from all parts of the world, and all walks of life, gather in great numbers to witness the "miracle" of the return of the swallows.

Each year the "Scout Swallows" precede the main flock by a few days and it seems to be their chief duty to clear the way for the main flock to arrive at the "Old Mission" of Capistrano. 

With the arrival of early dawn on St. Joseph's Day, the little birds begin to arrive and begin rebuilding their mud nests, which are clinging to the ruins of the old stone church of San Juan Capistrano. The arches of the two story, high vaulted Chapel were left bare and exposed, as the roof collapsed during the earthquake of 1812.

This Chapel, said to be the largest and most ornate in any of the missions, now has a more humble destiny--that of housing the birds that St. Francis loved so well.

After the summer spent within the sheltered walls of the Old Mission in San Juan Capistrano, the swallows take flight again, and on the Day of San Juan, October 23, they leave after circling the Mission bidding farewell to the "JEWEL OF ALL MISSIONS" San Juan Capistrano, California.

 www.sanjuancapistrano.net