Allegheny, Monongahela

Notes

83 Notes Allegheny, Monongahela / (al-i-gey-nee /muh-nong-guh-hay-luh) two rivers of Western Pennsylvania that join in Pittsburgh to form the Ohio.The Monongahela, like the Nile, flows north. Apple FAmily / titled after a series of Georgia O’Keeffe’s paintings, circa 1920. Blue BandtheTrainatTen O’clock / titled after O’Keeffe’s painting,“Blue B,”1959. Camera Obscura /“Camera Obscura Image of BrooklineView in Brady’s Room,1992.” Abelardo Morell and Luc Sante, Camera Obscura, Bullfinch, 2004. clAm sHell / titled after O’Keeffe’s painting,“Clam Shell,” 1930. Coming into Opera / the italicized Italian translates loosely to “leave me to die” and is drawn from the aria “Lasciatemi Morire” from Monteverdi’s Arianna. The Experiment / in a now-classic experiment, Swedish psychophysicist Gunnar Johansson filmed people acting in total darkness with small light bulbs attached to the main joints of their bodies.Though a single frame of a Johansson movie is nothing but a cloud of bright dots on a dark field, as soon as the movies were animated, observers could readily count the number of people in a scene, and even assess their activity, age, and sex. Gunnar Johansson, “Visual Perception of Biological Motion and a Model for itsAnalysis.” Perception and Psychophysics, 1973, #14. HoRizontAl HoRse’s oR mule’s skull witH FeAtHeR / titled after O’Keeffe’s painting “Horizontal Horse’s or Mule’s Skull withTurkey Feather,” 1936. In O’Keeffe’s FRom tHe lAke no. 3, / titled after O’Keeffe’s painting, “From the Lake No. 3,” 1924. 84 The Last Natural Blonde in theWorld / in 2002, several news stories, including one from the BBC,cited aWorld Health Organization study as proof that blonde coloring would go extinct in two hundred years and that the last natural blonde would be born in Finland.Soon after,theWHO issued a statement asserting that no such research existed; the study and the unnamed German scientist credited as a source were part of a hoax. Night-Blooming Cereus /“The Moghul Emperor Shahjehan,builder of theTaj Mahal monument, used to have all-white banquets on full moon nights at the Agra Fort.The terrace of the fort was bedecked with white carpets and cushions and white flowers, the guests dressed in white, and all the dishes served were white in color.” Camellia Panjabi, The Great Curries of India, Simon & Schuster, 1995. Novena / for Megan, October 2006. St. Jude is the patron saint of lost causes and desperate situations; green, the color of hope, is often associated with him. pink Andyellow HollyHocks / titled after O’Keeffe’s painting,“Pink andYellow Hollyhocks,” 1952. The epigraph is taken from Jan Garden Castro’s TheArt and Life of Georgia O’Keeffe, Three Rivers Press, 1995. Red Hills witHwHite cloud / titled after O’Keeffe’s painting“Red Hills withWhite Cloud,” 1937. For Leanna Ferrand, Ukrainian Christmas, 2005. sky witH FlAtwHite cloud / titled after O’Keeffe’s painting “Sky with FlatWhite Cloud,” 1962. Snowmelt / after AndrewWyeth’s painting,“Spring,” 1977. twoyellow leAves / titled after O’Keeffe’s painting,“TwoYellow Leaves,” 1928. 85 Wet Drape / the line,“kouros,Lapith,Lapith,caryatid,”refers to figures mythological and otherwise in ancient Greek sculpture,particularly the Parthenon’s metopes.“Pieta,” “Christ,”“Bound Slave” and “David” all refer to sculptures by Michelangelo. wHite cAmelliA / titled after Georgia O’Keeffe’s painting,“White Camelia,” 1938. X-ray / the epigraph is a caption corresponding to an x-ray of Anna Bertha Röntgen’s hand taken from “The New Marvel in Photography,” McClure’s Magazine, Vol.VI, No. 5,April 1896. Wilhelm Röntgen was the first person to create x-ray images, the first of which was of his wife’s hand. 86 This page intentionally left blank. ...