What really went on in Helsinki

I’m not going to keep going on about Donald Trump but I couldn’t resist pasting this part of an article by Niall Ferguson in Sunday’s Times (you need to be registered to read whole article) which he writes for. He is also a senior professor of economic history, teaching in America where he recently became a citizen so he now has dual nationality.  P sent it to me, he thought it was funny coming from a top notch historian, here goes:-

....... historians will mention Helsinki, but — if they are any good — the question they will ask is: what did Trump and Putin actually discuss in private, with only interpreters present? If I know Putin, it will have been the big-picture geopolitical stuff. Let me hazard a guess at what was said...

VP: What is the point of our constantly being at odds, Donald?

DT: Beats me.

VP: These sanctions are the work of your corrupt Congress. They are pointless. I am not giving back Crimea, and you know it.

DT: That’s a fact.

VP: True, I occasionally try to liquidate my political opponents, sometimes in foreign locations such as Salisbury, sometimes unsuccessfully, but your CIA has been doing that kind of wet job since time immemorial.

DT: There’s no denying it.

VP: Who are our real enemies?

DT: The Chinese. The Iranians. I’m kind of sick of the Germans too.

VP: You’re talking my language. I don’t much like those guys either. Here’s the way I see it. If you and I can work together, I can help you and you can help me. We cut a deal in the Middle East. We screw the Iranians — I don’t need them any more in Syria. We put the squeeze on the Chinese before they take over the world, including my back yard in central Asia. And we remind the Germans how much they fear us and need you.

DT: I like it.

VP: But just one thing, Donald.

DT: What’s that?

VP: No one must find out what we just agreed. So when we do the press conference, make sure you play your usual game with the press.

DT: Leave it to me.

VP: You know what the historians will call you and me one day, Donald?

DT: No — what?

VP: The Double Negatives.

DT: I don’t see why they wouldn’t!

Niall Ferguson is the Milbank Family senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford.

Tongue in cheek. Perhaps.

Have a good week.

Ronnie
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Villa of Mysteries

I love to travel and always read the travel inserts in the newspapers. So when I spotted an article about Pompeii and the "Villa of Mysteries" (which I'd never heard of and wasn't anything to do with actual travel) in The Independent I read on.

I thought it very interesting so copied the article and found some photos for your enjoyment.

At one end of the room, opposite the main door, the first thing you would have seen as you walked in was Dionysus, sprawling semi-naked in the lap of his mother, Semele – or maybe his wife, Ariadne (the female figure only partly survives). This divine couple is clearly the centrepiece of the whole composition, with its exotic cast of characters.

Leading up to the pair is a relatively stately procession: a woman carries a loaded tray, while looking out to catch the viewer's eye; a group of women cluster around some kind of container.

Yet, as the figures get nearer to Dionysus, things become decidedly stranger. Next to the figure of young Pan playing his pipes, his female partner (a "Panisca") appears to suckle a goat;

A satyr, one of Dionysus' mythical followers, holds up a cup into which his friends gaze intently; and the woman seems to start back in horror – but at what?

The answer to that question is probably to be found on the other side. For here a woman kneels as she begins to reveal something beneath a dark cloth (a phallus, it is usually imagined), while the winged demon whips the bare back of a girl who buries her face in her companion's lap. Just next to her, a naked woman dances and plays the castanets.

What on earth is going on? And what kind of room was it that these images decorated? Perhaps, as the Villa's title has it, the frieze is meant to depict an initiation into the cult of Dionysus: hence the revelation of the phallus, and the flagellation. But the room is one of the showrooms of this large house, opening on to a portico with a panoramic sea view. So this would be a scene intended as an elegant backdrop to dining and entertainment. Others have preferred to see the painting as an allegory of marriage and the preparation for a wedding. The bride has been identified as a young woman shown seated to the right of the main door and the central couple. On this interpretation, Dionysus and his wife, Ariadne, would symbolise the divine nature of marriage.

The truth is that we do not know exactly what is depicted here. Indeed, part of the pleasure of the frieze is the way that it repeatedly plays with our ability to decode it. But there is a surprising sting in the tail. One reason for the impact of this frieze is the way that it envelops anyone who steps into the room. Another is the sheer lustre of the deep red background, against which the figures are set: "Pompeian red" at its loveliest. This colour, however, cannot entirely be attributed to the original artist. When the paintings were first uncovered, they were so badly affected by damp that unsightly salts leeched through the paintwork. In order to remove the salts, petroleum wax was carefully and repeatedly rubbed into the painted surface. That memorable sheen is, in other words, a 20th-century creation.

Apparently it's the most famous painting discovered in the buried city of Pompeii – indeed the most famous surviving anywhere in the Roman world – the curious frieze that covers the walls of a large room in the Villa of the Mysteries, a substantial property just outside the boundary of the ancient city. Painted in the mid-1st century BC, a series of almost life-size figures that has become the modern icon of Pompeii, copied on to thousands of posters, ashtrays and fridge magnets.

Ronnie

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Culture, History & Discipline

Yesterday I got an email from Peter Jones, he's the solicitor in London who spanks women, I was surprised to see his name in my inbox but when I opened it I realised it was generated by his website and sent to all who'd registered with him, which I did a while back.

The email contained a video clip from Youtube entitled 'Helena Bonham-Carter gets birched', which I though was fair enough if that's her taste, so I clicked it and it's a lovely little extract from what is obviously a decent period production based on the Tudors, Bonham-Carter plays the unfortunate Lady Jane Grey, she does indeed get birched and goodness me I should think it smarted, obviously English discipline originated way before those wickedly corrupt Victorians turned it into an art form.

Poor Lady Jane, she was dealt with rather severely, I was hoping Patrick Stewart might carry out the discipline he's got such a lovely deep authoritative voice. 

Lady Jane, sometimes referred to as the Nine Day Queen, ruled England 10 July 1553 - 19 July 1553, she was tried with others for high treason on 13 November 1553 and eventually executed on 12 February 1554 at the age of seventeen. 

(Thanks to Lady_Karen_Rebel for pointing out a serious historical error in my previous post, I took the information from Youtube incorrectly. Thanks Karen)

Ronnie

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