Podcast appearances and mentions of donald olson

Looking for a powerful and timely piece of theatre? Then we have just the show for you!On the latest episode of Whisper in the Wings from Stage Whisper, we sat down with playwright Donald Olson to discuss his new show "Transition- The Christine Jorgensen Collection." We also talked about his incredible life and career in the theatre, so be sure to tune into this amazing conversation. And don't forget to bring a friend along!Transformation Theatre Presents:Transition- The Christine Jorgensen CollectionOne Time Virtual ReadingSunday, November 20, 2022 @ 5pm EDT/2pm PCTTickets and more information available at transformationtheatre.orgAnd be sure to check out Donald Olson's website to learn more about his many works and stay up to date with his upcoming projects!donaldstevenolson.com

REPLAY See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We've all heard the story of "Frankenstein's Monster." A bat shit crazy scientist wants to reanimate dead tissue and basically create a fucking zombie baby… BECAUSE THAT'S HOW YOU GET FUCKING ZOMBIES! Anyway, Dr. Frankenstein and his trusty assistant, Igor, set off to bring a bunch of random, dead body parts together, throw some lightning on the bugger and bring this new, puzzle piece of a quasi-human back to "life." At first, the reanimated corpse seems somewhat ordinary, but then flips his shit and starts terrorizing and doing what I can only imagine REANIMATED ZOMBIES FUCKING DO!    Mary Shelley was born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin in Somers Town, London, in 1797. She was the second child of the feminist philosopher, educator, and writer Mary Wollstonecraft and the first child of the philosopher, novelist, and journalist William Godwin.  So, she was brought into this world by some smart fucking people. Mary's mother died of puerperal fever shortly after Mary was born. Puerperal fever is an infectious, sometimes fatal, disease of childbirth; until the mid-19th century, this dreaded, then-mysterious illness could sweep through a hospital maternity ward and kill most new mothers. Today strict aseptic hospital techniques have made the condition uncommon in most parts of the world, except in unusual circumstances such as illegally induced abortion. Her father, William, was left to bring up Mary and her older half-sister, Fanny Imlay, Mary's mother's child by the American speculator Gilbert Imlay. A year after her mother's death, Godwin published his Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, which he intended as a sincere and compassionate tribute. However, the Memoirs revealed Mary's mother's affairs and her illegitimate child. In that period, they were seen as shocking. Mary read these memoirs and her mother's books and was brought up to cherish her mother's memory. Mary's earliest years were happy, judging from the letters of William's housekeeper and nurse, Louisa Jones. But Godwin was often deeply in debt; feeling that he could not raise Mary and Fanny himself, he looked for a second wife. In December 1801, he married Mary Jane Clairmont, a well-educated woman with two young children—Charles and Claire SO MANY MARY'S! Sorry folks. Most of her father's friends disliked his new wife, describing her as a straight fucking bitch. Ok, not really, but they didn't like her. However, William was devoted to her, and the marriage worked. Mary, however, came to hate that bitch. William's 19th-century biographer Charles Kegan Paul later suggested that Mrs. Godwin had favored her own children over Williams. So, how awesome is it that he had a biographer? That's so badass.  Together, Mary's father and his new bride started a publishing firm called M. J. Godwin, which sold children's books and stationery, maps, and games. However, the business wasn't making any loot, and her father was forced to borrow butt loads of money to keep it going. He kept borrowing money to pay off earlier loans, just adding to his problems. By 1809, William's business was close to closing up shop, and he was "near to despair." Mary's father was saved from debtor's prison by devotees such as Francis Place, who lent him additional money. So, debtor's prison is pretty much EXACTLY what it sounds like. If you couldn't pay your debts, they threw your ass in jail. Unlike today where they just FUCK UP YOUR CREDIT! THANKS, COLUMBIA HOUSE!!!  Though Mary received little education, her father tutored her in many subjects. He often took the children on educational trips. They had access to his library and the many intelligent mofos who visited him, including the Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the former vice-president of the United States Aaron Burr. You know, that dude that shot and killed his POLITICAL opponent, Alexander Hamilton, in a fucking duel! Ah… I was born in the wrong century.   Mary's father admitted he was not educating the children according to Mary's mother's philosophy as outlined in works such as A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. However, Mary still received an unusual and advanced education for a girl of the time. She had a governess, a daily tutor, and read many of her father's children's Roman and Greek history books. For six months in 1811, she also attended a boarding school in Ramsgate, England. Her father described her at age 15 as "singularly bold, somewhat imperious, and active of mind. Her desire of knowledge is great, and her perseverance in everything she undertakes almost invincible." My father didn't know how to spell my name until I was twelve.  In June of 1812, Mary's father sent her to stay with the family of the radical William Baxter, near Dundee, Scotland. In a letter to Baxter, he wrote, "I am anxious that she should be brought up ... like a philosopher, even like a cynic." Scholars have speculated that she may have been sent away for her health, remove her from the seamy side of the business, or introduce her to radical politics. However, Mary loved the spacious surroundings of Baxter's house and with his four daughters, and she returned north in the summer of 1813 to hang out for 10 months. In the 1831 introduction to Frankenstein, she recalled: "I wrote then—but in a most common-place style. It was beneath the trees of the grounds belonging to our house, or on the bleak sides of the woodless mountains near, that my true compositions, the airy flights of my imagination, were born and fostered."   Mary Godwin may have first met the radical poet-philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley in between her two stays in Scotland. When she returned home for a second time on 30 March 1814, Percy Shelley became estranged from his wife and regularly visited Mary's father, William Godwin, whom he had agreed to bail out of debt. Percy Shelley's radicalism, particularly his economic views, alienated him from his wealthy aristocratic family. They wanted him to be a high, upstanding snoot and follow traditional models of the landed aristocracy. He tried to donate large amounts of the family's money to projects meant to help the poor and disadvantaged. Percy Shelley, therefore, had a problem gaining access to capital until he inherited his estate because his family did not want him wasting it on projects of "political justice." After several months of promises, Shelley announced that he could not or would not pay off all of Godwin's debts. Godwin was angry and felt betrayed and whooped his fuckin ass! Yeah! Ok, not really. He was just super pissed. Mary and Percy began hookin' up on the down-low at her mother Mary Wollstonecraft's grave in the churchyard of St Pancras Old Church, and they fell in love—she was 16, and he was 21. Creepy and super fucking gross.   On 26 June 1814, Shelley and Godwin declared their love for one another as Shelley announced he could not hide his "ardent passion,." This led her in a "sublime and rapturous moment" to say she felt the same way; on either that day or the next, Godwin lost her virginity to Shelley, which tradition claims happened in the churchyard. So, the grown-ass 21-year-old man statutorily raped the 16-year-old daughter of the man he idolized and dicked over. In a graveyard. My god, how things have changed...GROSS! Godwin described herself as attracted to Shelley's "wild, intellectual, unearthly looks." Smart but ugly. Got it. To Mary's dismay, her father disapproved and tried to thwart the relationship and salvage his daughter's "spotless fame." No! You don't say! Dad wasn't into his TEENAGE DAUGHTER BANGING A MAN IN THE GRAVEYARD!?! Mary's father learned of Shelley's inability to pay off the father's debts at about the same time. Oof. He found out after he diddled her. Mary, who later wrote of "my excessive and romantic attachment to my father," was confused. Um… what? She saw Percy Shelley as an embodiment of her parents' liberal and reformist ideas of the 1790s, particularly Godwin's view that marriage was a repressive monopoly, which he had argued in his 1793 edition of Political Justice but later retracted. On 28 July 1814, the couple eloped and secretly left for France, taking Mary's stepsister, Claire Clairmont, with them.  After convincing Mary's mother, who took off after them to Calais, that they did not wish to return, the trio traveled to Paris, and then, by donkey, mule, carriage, and foot, through France, recently ravaged by war, all the way to Switzerland. "It was acting in a novel, being an incarnate romance," Mary Shelley recalled in 1826. Godwin wrote about France in 1814: "The distress of the inhabitants, whose houses had been burned, their cattle killed and all their wealth destroyed, has given a sting to my detestation of war...". As they traveled, Mary and Percy read works by Mary Wollstonecraft and others, kept a joint journal, and continued their own writing. Finally, at Lucerne, lack of money forced the three to turn back. Instead, they traveled down the Rhine and by land to the Dutch port of Maassluis, arriving at Gravesend, Kent, on 13 September 1814. The situation awaiting Mary Godwin in England was packed with bullshit, some of which she had not expected. Either before or during their journey, she had become pregnant. She and Percy now found themselves penniless, and, to Mary's stupid ass surprise, her father refused to have anything to do with her. The couple moved with Claire into lodgings at Somers Town, and later, Nelson Square. They kept doing their thing, reading, and writing and entertained Percy Shelley's friends. Percy Shelley would often leave home for short periods to dodge bill collectors, and the couple's heartbroken letters would reveal their pain while he was away. Pregnant and often sick, Mary Godwin had to hear of Percy's joy at the birth of his son by Harriet Shelley in late 1814 due to his constant escapades with Claire Clairmont. Supposedly, Shelley and Clairmont were almost certainly lovers, which caused Mary to be rightfully jealous. And yes, Claire was Mary's cousin. Percy was a friggin' creep. Percy pissed off Mary when he suggested that they both take the plunge into a stream naked during a walk in the French countryside. This offended her due to her principles, and she was like, "Oh, hell nah, sahn!" and started taking off her earrings in a rage. Or something like that. She was partly consoled by the visits of Hogg, whom she disliked at first but soon considered a close friend. Percy Shelley seems to have wanted Mary and Hogg to become lovers; Mary did not dismiss the idea since she believed in free love in principle. She was a hippie before being a hippie was cool. Percy probably just wanted to not feel guilty for hooking up with her cousin. Creep. In reality, however, she loved only Percy and seemed to have gone no further than flirting with Hogg. On 22 February 1815, she gave birth to a two-months premature baby girl, who was not expected to survive. On 6 March, she wrote to Hogg: "My dearest Hogg, my baby is dead—will you come to see me as soon as you can. I wish to see you—It was perfectly well when I went to bed—I awoke in the night to give it suck it appeared to be sleeping so quietly that I would not awake it. It was dead then, but we did not find that out till morning—from its appearance it evidently died of convulsions—Will you come—you are so calm a creature & Shelley (Percy) is afraid of a fever from the milk—for I am no longer a mother now." The loss of her child brought about acute depression in Mary. She was haunted by visions of the baby, but she conceived again and had recovered by the summer. With a revival in Percy's finances after the death of his grandfather, Sir Bysshe Shelley, the couple holidayed in Torquay and then rented a two-story cottage at Bishopsgate, on the edge of Windsor Great Park. Unfortunately, little is known about this period in Mary Godwin's life since her journal from May 1815 to July 1816 was lost. At Bishopsgate, Percy wrote his poem Alastor or The Spirit of Solitude; and on 24 January 1816, Mary gave birth to a second child, William, named after her father and soon nicknamed "Willmouse." In her novel The Last Man, she later imagined Windsor as a Garden of Eden. In May 1816, Mary, Percy, and their son traveled to Geneva with Claire Clairmont. They planned to spend the summer with the poet Lord Byron, whose recent affair with Claire had left her pregnant. Claire sounds like a bit of a trollop. No judging, just making an observation. The party arrived in Geneva on 14 May 1816, where Mary called herself "Mrs Shelley." Byron joined them on 25 May with his young physician, John William Polidori, and rented the Villa Diodati, close to Lake Geneva at the village of Cologny; Percy rented a smaller building called Maison Chapuis on the waterfront nearby. They spent their time writing, boating on the lake, and talking late into the night. "It proved a wet, ungenial summer," Mary Shelley remembered in 1831, "and incessant rain often confined us for days to the house." Sitting around a log fire at Byron's villa, the company amused themselves with German ghost stories called Fantasmagoriana, which prompted Byron to propose that they "each write a ghost story." Unable to think up an account, young Mary became flustered: "Have you thought of a story? I was asked each morning, and each morning I was forced to reply with a mortifying negative." Finally, one mid-June evening, the discussions turned to the principle of life. "Perhaps a corpse would be reanimated," Mary noted, "galvanism had given token of such things." Galvanism is a term invented by the late 18th-century physicist and chemist Alessandro Volta to refer to the generation of electric current by chemical action. The word also came to refer to the discoveries of its namesake, Luigi Galvani, specifically the generation of electric current within biological organisms and the contraction/convulsion of natural muscle tissue upon contact with electric current. While Volta theorized and later demonstrated the phenomenon of his "Galvanism" to be replicable with otherwise inert materials, Galvani thought his discovery to confirm the existence of "animal electricity," a vital force that gave life to organic matter. We'll talk a little more about Galvani and a murderer named George Foster toward the end of the episode. It was after midnight before they retired, and she was unable to sleep, mainly because she became overwhelmed by her imagination as she kept thinking about the grim terrors of her "waking dream," her ghost story: "I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world." She began writing what she assumed would be a short, profound story. With Percy Shelley's encouragement, she turned her little idea into her first novel, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, published in 1818. She later described that time in Switzerland as "when I first stepped out from childhood into life." The story of the writing of Frankenstein has been fictionalized repeatedly, and it helped form the basis for several films. Here's a cool little side note: In September 2011, the astronomer Donald Olson, after a visit to the Lake Geneva villa the previous year and inspecting data about the motion of the moon and stars, concluded that her waking dream took place "between 2 am and 3 am" 16 June 1816, several days after the initial idea by Lord Byron that they each write their ghost stories. Shelley and her husband collaborated on the story, but the extent of Percy's contribution to the novel is unknown and has been argued over by readers and critics forever. There are differences in the 1818, 1823, and 1831 versions. Mary Shelley wrote, "I certainly did not owe the suggestion of one incident, nor scarcely of one train of feeling, to my husband, and yet but for his incitement, it would never have taken the form in which it was presented to the world." She wrote that the preface to the first edition was her husband's work "as far as I can recollect." James Rieger concluded Percy's "assistance at every point in the book's manufacture was so extensive that one hardly knows whether to regard him as editor or minor collaborator." At the same time, Anne K. Mellor later argued Percy only "made many technical corrections and several times clarified the narrative and thematic continuity of the text." Charles E. Robinson, the editor of a facsimile edition of the Frankenstein manuscripts, concluded that Percy's contributions to the book "were no more than what most publishers' editors have provided new (or old) authors or, in fact, what colleagues have provided to each other after reading each other's works in progress." So, eat one, Percy! Just kidding. In 1840 and 1842, Mary and her son traveled together all over the continent. Mary recorded these trips in Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842, and 1843. In 1844, Sir Timothy Shelley finally died at the age of ninety, "falling from the stalk like an overblown flower," Mary put it. For the first time in her life, she and her son were financially independent, though the remaining estate wasn't worth as much as they had thought. In the mid-1840s, Mary Shelley found herself in the crosshairs of three separate blackmailing sons of bitches. First, in 1845, an Italian political exile called Gatteschi, whom she had met in Paris, threatened to publish letters she had sent him. Scandalous! However, a friend of her son's bribed a police chief into seizing Gatteschi's papers, including the letters, which were then destroyed. Vaffanculo, Gatteschi! Shortly afterward, Mary Shelley bought some letters written by herself and Percy Shelley from a man calling himself G. Byron and posing as the illegitimate son of the late Lord Byron. Also, in 1845, Percy Shelley's cousin Thomas Medwin approached her, claiming to have written a damaging biography of Percy Shelley. He said he would suppress it in return for £250, but Mary told him to eat a big ole bag of dicks and jog on! In 1848, Percy Florence married Jane Gibson St John. The marriage proved a happy one, and Mary liked Jane. Mary lived with her son and daughter-in-law at Field Place, Sussex, the Shelleys' ancestral home, and at Chester Square, London, and vacationed with them, as well. Mary's last years were blighted by illness. From 1839, she suffered from headaches and bouts of paralysis in parts of her body, which sometimes prevented her from reading and writing, obviously two of her favorite things. Then, on 1 February 1851, at Chester Square, Mary Shelly died at fifty-three from what her doctor suspected was a brain tumor. According to Jane Shelley, Mary had asked to be buried with her mother and father. Still, looking at the graveyard at St Pancras and calling it "dreadful," Percy and Jane chose to bury her instead at St Peter's Church in Bournemouth, near their new home at Boscombe. On the first anniversary of Mary's death, the Shelleys opened her box-desk. Inside they found locks of her dead children's hair, a notebook she had shared with Percy Bysshe Shelley, and a copy of his poem Adonaïs with one page folded round a silk parcel containing some of his ashes and the remains of his heart. Romantic or disturbing? Maybe a bit of both. Mary Shelley remained a stout political radical throughout her life. Mary's works often suggested that cooperation and sympathy, mainly as practiced by women in the family, were the ways to reform civil society. This view directly challenged the individualistic Romantic ethos promoted by Percy Shelley and Enlightenment political theories. She wrote seven novels / Two travel narrations / Twenty three short stories / Three books of children's literature, and many articles. Mary Shelley left her mark on the literary world, and her name will be forever etched in the catacombs of horror for generations to come. When it comes to reanimation, there's someone else we need to talk about. George Forster (or Foster) was found guilty of murdering his wife and child by drowning them in Paddington Canal, London. He was hanged at Newgate on 18 January 1803, after which his body was taken to a nearby house where it was used in an experiment by Italian scientist Giovanni Aldini. At his trial, the events were reconstructed. Forster's mother-in-law recounted that her daughter and grandchild had left her house to see Forster at 4 pm on Saturday, 4 December 1802. In whose house Forster lodged, Joseph Bradfield reported that they had stayed together that night and gone out at 10 am on Sunday morning. He also stated that Forster and his wife had not been on good terms because she wished to live with him. On Sunday, various witnesses saw Forster with his wife and child in public houses near Paddington Canal. The body of his child was found on Monday morning; after the canal was dragged for three days, his wife's body was also found. Forster claimed that upon leaving The Mitre, he set out alone for Barnet to see his other two children in the workhouse there, though he was forced to turn back at Whetstone due to the failing light. This was contradicted by a waiter at The Mitre who said the three left the inn together. Skepticism was also expressed that he could have walked to Whetstone when he claimed. Nevertheless, the jury found him guilty. He was sentenced to death and also to be dissected after that. This sentence was designed to provide medicine with corpses on which to experiment and ensure that the condemned could not rise on Judgement Day, their bodies having been cut into pieces and selectively discarded. Forster was hanged on 18 January, shortly before he made a full confession. He said he had come to hate his wife and had twice before taken his wife to the canal, but his nerve had both times failed him. A recent BBC Knowledge documentary (Real Horror: Frankenstein) questions the fairness of the trial. It notes that friends of George Forster's wife later claimed that she was highly suicidal and had often talked about killing herself and her daughter. According to this documentary, Forster attempted suicide by stabbing himself with a crudely fashioned knife. This was to avoid awakening during the dissection of his body, should he not have died when hanged. This was a real possibility owing to the crude methods of execution at the time. The same reference suggests that his 'confession' was obtained under duress. In fact, it alleges that Pass, a Beadle or an official of a church or synagogue on Aldini's payroll, fast-tracked the whole trial and legal procedure to obtain the freshest corpse possible for his benefactor. After the execution, Forster's body was given to Giovanni Aldini for experimentation. Aldini was the nephew of fellow scientist Luigi Galvani and an enthusiastic proponent of his uncle's method of stimulating muscles with electric current, known as Galvanism. The experiment he performed on Forster's body demonstrated this technique. The Newgate Calendar (a record of executions at Newgate) reports that "On the first application of the process to the face, the jaws of the deceased criminal began to quiver, and the adjoining muscles were horribly contorted, and one eye was actually opened. In the subsequent part of the process the right hand was raised and clenched, and the legs and thighs were set in motion."  Several people present believed that Forster was being brought back to life (The Newgate Calendar reports that even if this had been so, he would have been re-executed since his sentence was to "hang until he be dead"). One man, Mr. Pass, the beadle of the Surgeons' Company, was so shocked that he died shortly after leaving. The hanged man was undoubtedly dead since his blood had been drained and his spinal cord severed after the execution.   Top Ten Frankenstein Movies https://screenrant.com/best-frankenstein-movies-ranked-imdb/

9/20/20: Donald Olson See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This interview is with Dr. Donald Olson, owner of Torii Mor Winery in the Dundee Hills. Don talks about why he decided to buy the vineyard and eventually start a winery and where the name came from. He also talks about what makes excellent Pinot Noir and the future of the winery. This interview was conducted by Rich Schmidt at Torii Mor on August 7, 2017.

En su poema “Año de Meteoros”, el poeta Walt Whitman describe una “extraña y gigante procesión de meteoritos que pasaba, deslumbrante, por encima de nuestras cabezas”. El astrónomo forense Donald Olson investigó el poema y encontró el fenómeno que lo había inspirado: un meteorito de pastoreo que cruzó el cielo de Nueva York el 20 de julio de 1860 y que fue retratado por el pintor Federich Church en un maravilloso cuadro.La historia del arte y el conocimiento de la astronomía han estado siempre íntimamente relacionados. Algunos especialistas, como la astrónoma Montserrat Villar se dedican a rastrear los cielos de los cuadros para conocer la influencia que tuvo el conocimiento científico de cada época en las obras. Acompañados por ella, entramos en las salas del Museo del Prado para hacer un recorrido por sus cuadros con una visión distinta. ¿Qué reflejan los cielos de las grandes obras maestras y qué sabían del cielo sus autores?* Si quieres ver los cuadros de los que hablamos en el episodio, haz clic aquí.** Enlaces para saber más: página de Donald Olson, Una lección de astronomía en los cielos del Prado (Next), Trabajos de astronomía forense (Fogonazos), Cervantes y el enigma de las lunas de Júpiter (El Mundo)*** Para despistados: La ilustración de Javi Álvarez para este capítulo es una versión del famoso grabado de Flammarion en la

En su poema “Año de Meteoros”, el poeta Walt Whitman describe una “extraña y gigante procesión de meteoritos que pasaba, deslumbrante, por encima de nuestras cabezas”. El astrónomo forense Donald Olson investigó el poema y encontró el fenómeno que lo había inspirado: un meteorito de pastoreo que cruzó el cielo de Nueva York el 20 de julio de 1860 y que fue retratado por el pintor Federich Church en un maravilloso cuadro.La historia del arte y el conocimiento de la astronomía han estado siempre íntimamente relacionados. Algunos especialistas, como la astrónoma Montserrat Villar se dedican a rastrear los cielos de los cuadros para conocer la influencia que tuvo el conocimiento científico de cada época en las obras. Acompañados por ella, entramos en las salas del Museo del Prado para hacer un recorrido por sus cuadros con una visión distinta. ¿Qué reflejan los cielos de las grandes obras maestras y qué sabían del cielo sus autores?* Si quieres ver los cuadros de los que hablamos en el episodio, haz clic aquí.** Enlaces para saber más: página de Donald Olson,  Una lección de astronomía en los cielos del Prado (Next), Trabajos de astronomía forense (Fogonazos), Cervantes y el enigma de las lunas de Júpiter (El Mundo)*** Para despistados: La ilustración de Javi Álvarez para este capítulo es una versión del famoso grabado de Flammarion en la

  Historia detrás de una fotografía En el día de hoy os traemos uno de los podcast más demandados, dónde hablaremos de la mítica foto de: El beso del marinero. Una fotografía icónica repleta de dudas y curiosidades que marcaron un hito en la historia de la fotografía y sirvió de propaganda política para EE.UU A comienzos de agosto de 1945 dos bombas atómicas estadounidenses habían sido lanzadas sobre Japón. Ante semejante demostración de fuerza bruta el país que bombardeó por sorpresa Pearl Harbour tres años antes no tuvo más remedio que rendirse. Estados Unidos había ganado la guerra. El presidente Truman lo anunció a las 7 de la tarde del 14 de agosto en un discurso, pero desde hacía horas el centro de Nueva York estaba repleto de gente con unas enormes ganas de celebrar el fin del conflicto. Desde entonces a esta fecha se la conoce como V-J Day (Victory over Japan Day). Esta es la historia de un beso eterno. El que la enfermera Greta Zimmer Friedman y el marinero George Mendonsa, según su propio relato, se dieron el 14 de agosto de 1945 en Nueva York sin conocerse ni decirse los nombres. La fotografía El momento fue inmortalizado por Alfred Eisenstaedt y Victor Jorgensen desde dos ángulos diferentes. La foto de Alfred Eisenstaedt, la más famosa, fue publicada en la revista Time, mientras que la de Victor Jorgensen, menos conocida, apareció en el New York Times. Actualmente es distribuida por la agencia de fotografía Getty. Por su parte, la foto de Victor Jorgensen puede ser publicada libremente, ya que el negativo pertenece al Gobierno de Estados Unidos. Pues Jorgensen era fotógrafo de la Marina se puede descargar desde aquí https://www.archives.gov/research/military/ww2/photos/images/thumbnails La imagen también tiene un alto valor propagandístico. Pues un beso entre un marinero y una enfermera simboliza el triunfo del trabajo en común que tanto se había fomentado en los Estados Unidos durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Según Alfred La fotografía fue totalmente espontánea vio a un marinero que iba besando enfermeras por toda la calle y lo siguió esperó aquel momento, lo retrató y se fue, no preguntó nombres de los implicados: “En Times Square durante el día de la victoria, vi a un marinero a lo largo de la calle que agarraba a todas y cada una de las chicas que se ponían a su alcance. Tanto si pudieran ser su abuela, fueran altas, delgadas o viejas, no hacía distinción. Fui corriendo atrás mirando por encima del hombro con mi Leica pero ninguna de las tomas que hacía me agradaba. De repente, como un destello, vi algo que se me grabó. Me di la vuelta y capturé el momento justo en que el marinero besó a una enfermera. Si ella hubiera llevado un vestido oscuro jamás me habría dado cuenta. Nunca habría disparado la toma, o si el marinero hubiera llevado uniforme blanco, lo mismo. Realicé cuatro tomas. Fue en apenas unos segundos.” Se duda del comportamiento sea casual ya que quedo registrado en la misma publicación de la revista LIFE varias fotografías de marineros besando a enfermeras incluso en este video podemos ver a un marinero besando a varias chicas. Hay fuentes que dicen que el marinero era Glenn McDuffie, el cual murió en 2014, declaró haber sido él quien cambiando de vagón de metro se enteró de la noticia y salió a celebrarlo, encontrándose con una alegre enfermera que al verle tan contento le abrió los brazos y se fundieron en un beso En busca de los personajes Y fue a principios de la década de los años ochenta cuando se empezó a valorizar lo que representaba esta fotografía por lo que se inició la búsqueda de nuevo de la pareja, un marinero y una enfermera que fueron fotografiados en ese momento. Finalmente, se llegó a la identificación exacta: George Mendonsa, marinero en ese tiempo y que posteriormente sería pescador, con una edad actual de 89 años y residente de Rhode Island. La identidad del marinero no estaba nada clara, hasta que pasados los años, George Mendonsa fue tan lejos como para demandar a Life ante la Escuela Naval de Guerra dónde se usó tecnología de escaneo de rostro en 3D para concluir que fue él quién besó a la enfermera. El dijo: “Yo había ido con una amiga (su futura mujer) a un show al Radio City Hall, cuando interrumpieron para decir que la guerra había acabado. Salí fuera, estaba exultante, vi a una enfermera y la besé por pura alegría” El papel protagonista de la mujer está dividido entre dos enfermeras. Una de ellas, Edith Shain, muerta en 2010 a los 91 años, llegó a ser considerada durante años como la auténtica. “Le dejé besarme porque había estado en la guerra”, decía esta profesora de educación infantil de Beverly Hills. La segunda es Greta Zimmer Friedman, según su relato, no supo que la habían fotografíado hasta 20 años después. La segunda es Greta Zimmer Friedman, según su relato, no supo que la habían fotografíado hasta 20 años después. Judía de origen austriaco, sus padres murieron en el Holocausto y ella pisó tierra estadounidense a los 15 años. “De repente, me agarró un marinero. No fue tanto un beso como un acto de celebración: él ya no tenía que volver al Pacífico, al frente donde había combatido. Me tomó en brazos porque me vio vestida como una enfermera y estaba agradecido a todas las enfermeras. No fue algo romántico, sino una forma de decir: ‘Gracias a Dios, la guerra ha terminado”. El relato de la fotografía es el de una casualidad. Zimmer, que en realidad era asistente dental, siempre contó que salió de la clínica aquel 14 de agosto para comprobar si era verdad lo que había escuchado en el trabajo. Muy cerca de su oficina, en Times Square, en pleno corazón de Manhattan, halló la respuesta. La algarabía reinaba. Los cárteles luminosos, como recordaría años más tarde, parpadeaban con frenesí. La propia Friedman explicó antes de morir que Mendonsa la agarró y la besó sin que ella pudiera reaccionar. Además, Mendonsa estaba ebrio. Terminado su trabajo de asistenta dental, dio rienda suelta a sus pasiones: obtuvo una licenciatura en artes, tuvo dos hijos y al final de sus días se dedicó a restaurar libros. A los 92 años, con la cadera rota, osteoporosis avanzada y una neumonía fulminante, falleció en Virginia Greta Zimmer. Por segunda vez, moría la protagonista del beso eterno. El Proyecto de Memoria Histórica de los Veteranos de la II Guerra Mundial la entrevistó como tal y ahí la antigua asistente dental pudo dar su versión completa. Pero el mayor impacto procedió del libro El marino que besaba: el misterio detrás de la fotografía que puso fin a la Segunda Guerra Mundial. En esta investigación, publicada en 2012, Lawrence Verria and George Galdorisi, tras recoger infinitud de testimonios e indicios, entre ellos la estatura y el pelo, destronaban a Shain y daban el reconocimiento a Greta Zimmer. También jugó a favor el reencuentro en 2012 de ambos ancianos en Times Square. Curiosidades Una copia positivada a partir del negativo original y firmada por Eisenstaedt se vendió en 2013 por 24.000 euros. Gloria Delaney, una enfermera de 19 años que aparece tras la pareja en la foto de Victor Jorgensen. En el New York Times narró hace unos años como vivió aquel histórico momento. Los científicos Donald Olson y Russell Doescher ,reconstruyeron a escala los edificios de Times Square allá por el 1945 y utilizaron un espejo para proyectar los rayos del sol. Hasta que el modelo correspondió perfectamente con las sombras de la fotografía. afirma que el famoso beso se produjo a las 17:51 horas. Faltaba algo más de una hora para que Truman hiciera oficial el anuncio de la rendición japonesa.  

Yosemite Podcast Show Notes   Today we’re going to talk about photographing Yosemite, the national park that Ansel Adams made famous and one of my all-time favorite parks. I still remember getting goosebumps the first time I came down the hill on Big Oak Flat Road and the valley opened up before me.  I’ve been back many times since, but still remember that first time.  Most people only visit the valley floor which is only a very small part of the entire park, but it’s where the icons are and not to be missed.  My favorite spots are Tunnel View, Valley View and Glacier Point.  Pretty obvious ones I guess, but we’ll also talk about some of the lesser known spots too. The park itself is about a 4-hour drive east of San Francisco and southeast of Sacramento.  I always recommend people fly into Sacramento because of all the traffic in and around San Francisco not to mention the hassle of flying into San Francisco International. If you’re driving, you have more options depending on where you’re coming from.  I live in NW Nevada, so I prefer coming down Hwy 395 on the east side of the Sierra’s and going over Tioga Pass when it’s open which is usually sometime in May.  But if you’re in California or the Pacific Northwest, you will want to use either the Big Oak Flat entrance in the NW part of the park on Highway 120 or the South Entrance on Highway 41. The best times of year to be there are spring and winter in my opinion.  Spring for the waterfalls and wildflowers; winter for snow and clearing storms. Summer is less than ideal with lots of tourists and in most years the waterfalls are a trickle or not running at all.  There is some fall color in Yosemite usually in late October and early November, but the trees do not always change color at the same time. It’s a time for intimate landscapes along the Merced River mostly. So, a typical day in the park usually starts before sunrise and ends after sunset.  The best color is frequently a half hour before sunrise and up to a half hour after sunset.  For sunrise, you have to be there early not only for the pre-sunrise color, but also to get the best spot or any spot at all.  You definitely want to be there before the tour buses arrive. Likewise, at sunset you need to be there 45-60 minutes before official sunset to stake out your spot at Valley View, Tunnel View and Glacier Point.  Sunset light hits Valley View first and then Tunnel View with Glacier Point last because of the differing altitudes.  You can do Valley View and Tunnel View in one day if you don’t dilly dally too long at Valley View, but Glacier Point is at least an hour from the Valley Floor and a separate trip. The best time of day to photograph the various waterfalls like Yosemite Falls, Bridal Veil Fall and Vernal Fall is mid-morning for Yosemite Falls, mid- late afternoon for Bridal Veil Fall and mid-day for Vernal and Nevada Falls.  This is because Yosemite Valley sits in a deep canyon several thousand feet below the rim, so light does not strike the north rim until mid-morning and the south rim until mid-late afternoon otherwise these falls are in deep shadow.  The same is true of Vernal Fall and Nevada Fall because they’re in the Merced River canyon. I usually recommend people plan to spend at least five days photographing the park to allow for a couple of sunrises and sunsets at Tunnel View and Valley View and 1-2 sunsets at Glacier Point.  Plus time to drive to the Mariposa Giant Sequoia’s, Tenaya Lake and Olmsted Point. Off the beaten path spots for sunset are Olmsted Point and Tenaya Lake.  There are great views all around at Olmsted Point, but my favorite is the one of Half Dome at sunset especially if there are some nice clouds to reflect the sunset light.  You can shoot from the parking lot here or climb the rock on the west side or north side for a different perspective.  Don’t forget to look behind you or to the east for sunset lit clouds or mountains. At the Tenaya Lake parking lot, you have to hike a hundred yards or less to the east to reach the lake front.  There is a flat rock extending out into the lake which makes a good leading line for the lake and the distant mountains as well as spot to put your tripod. Night photography at Olmsted Point can be productive.  You have good views to the south and west and there are Jeffrey pines for foreground material.  The best time for this depends on the phase of the moon and the time of moonrise.  Ideally, you want either a new moon or a quarter moon at most and shortly after moonrise time wise.  If the moon is too full or in the wrong part of the sky the stars are nearly invisible. One other popular option is a moonbow over Yosemite falls which works best under a full moon in April and May.  Fortunately, the best times are pre-determined every year by Donald Olson at Texas State University at www.donolson.wp.txstate.edu  A new moon or quarter moon also allow for night shots of the icons from locations like Valley View or Tunnel View. My favorite lenses in Yosemite are the 24-70 and 70-200.  The 24-70 for the grand landscape view.  But sometimes it’s more interesting to isolate parts of the scene for a different perspective.  My go to camera body for landscapes is the D4.  Not a traditional landscape body, but if I want more megapixels I can shoot panoramas. I always like to recommend Michael Frye’s book “The Photographer’s Guide to Yosemite” available through my Amazon A-store and his Yosemite app available at https://www.michaelfrye.com   Another useful app is The Photographer’s Ephemeris for figuring out sunrise, sunset and moonrise.  Available for iOS, Android and pc’s. Another useful app for national parks are the National Parks by Chimani available for Android and iOS both.  Apps are free and available for all 59 National Parks. Also helpful is www.npmaps.com where you can download free NPS maps for each park. If you like to hike, http://yellowstonehikes.com is a great resource. Here are a few photos from Yosemite from myself and Bill Naiman:  

In August, The Art Newspaper reported that Donald Olson, an astrophysicist at Texas State University, had pinpointed the exact moment that Monet painted his work Impression: Sunrise to 13 November 1872. The report described this moment as the "birth of Impressionism." In today's episode, we discuss the painting and unravel some of the problems of this claim.

Texas State University astronomer Donald Olson combined solar, tidal and weather data to identify the likely moment of the image in the Monet work Impression, Sunrise      

Scientific American staffers Mark Fischetti and Robin Lloyd talk with podcast host Steve Mirsky about sessions they attended--including those about algae for energy, dissecting the astronomy in art, and attitudes about climate change--at the recent meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Plus, we'll test your knowledge about some recent science in the news. Web sites related to this episode include www.aaas.org, www.aven.com