Charles E. Aufderheide (1918-1991): "Letter to Helena"

 

If I could send you bees and bugs

Kettles, colanders, and cats

Linings from coats, toothpaste tubes

Cellophane from cigarettes, and fur 

To furnish play and build your laughter 

Up to dimpled creases, to khaki eyes

You would not be my little girl.  Anyone

Can give you these. You find them yourself.

So I am giftless. You make independent 

Fun. Even the great desert sun

Just as it touches the evening earth

Becomes your rolling red marble.

"Garden of Games: The Collected Poems of Charles E. Aufderheide"

Asylum Arts, Santa Maria, California 1993

Isla de Flores, a Stony Love Song

 

Isla de Flores  Short Documentary, November 2020  -  Leonardo Chouciño

Image WIKIPEDIA

Lynn H. Nicholas

Full of optimism after this high-level response, Taylor wrote Sachs on December 4, 1942: "I do not know yet how the Federal Government will decide to organize this, but one thing is crystal clear: that we will be called upon for  professional service, either in civilian or military capacity. I personally have offered my services, and am ready for either." To reinforce their actions, Taylor and Dinsmoor have both written a memorandum for presentation to the President, recommending "a corps of specialists to deal with the matter of protecting monuments and works of art in liaison with the Army and Navy." As flamboyant as the man himself, Taylor's long memo somewhat undiplomatically referred to the centuries-long dispute over British possession of the Elgin marbles, and to Napoleon's removal of the bronze horses of Saint Mark's in Venice, in the same paragraph as the confiscations by the Nazis. ...  How this was to be accomplished,  given the recent invasion of North Africa, the deadly situation at Stalingrad, and the continued bombing of Britain, was not addressed.

Excerpt from Lynn H. NICOLAS' book "The Rape of Europa"

Vintage Books 1994

Dante

... As children, silent in shame, with their eyes upon the ground stand listening  and conscience-striken and repentant, so I was standing ...

Purgatory, Canto XXXI