Courgetts (or Courgettes)

Courgetts (or Courgettes)
Courgetts (or Courgettes), originally uploaded by swanksalot.

There isn’t much of a language barrier in the UK for an American visitor, but this word baffled me in a few restaurants before stumbling upon this farmers market. Ahh, zucchini.

From Wikipedia:

Zucchini, like all summer squash, has its ancestry in the Americas. However, the varieties of squash typically called “zucchini” were indeed developed in Italy, many generations after their introduction from the “New World”.

In all probability, this occurred in the very late 19th century, probably near Milan; early varieties usually included the names of nearby cities in their names. The alternate name courgette is from the French word for the vegetable, with the same spelling, and is commonly used in France, Ireland, and the United Kingdom. It is a diminutive of courge, French for squash. “Zucca” is the Italian word for squash and “zucchina” is its diminutive, becoming “zucchine” in the plural. However, “zucchino”, the masculine form, becoming “zucchini” in the plural, is just as commonly used and is prevalent in Tuscany. Italian dictionaries such as “lo Zingarelli 1995, Zanichelli editor”, give both forms. “Zucchini” is used in Italy , and in Australia, Canada and the United States. ‘Zucchini’ is plural in Italian whereas in English it is singular. The first records of zucchini in the United States date to the early 1920s. It was almost certainly brought over by Italian immigrants and probably was first cultivated in the United States in California.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zucchini

I didn’t even notice it was misspelled on the sign until Frank1 pointed it out…

Footnotes:
  1. aka The Irish Samurai []

The County Hall, London – TRI-X 400

post processed in Photoshop, of course.

Bigger in Lightbox

I’m slowly chugging through all of my photos from London, have three more days of images to sort through.

If you are curious as to what I’ve found of interest so far, there is a Flickr set called London which has a slideshow option. Give it a second to load. There are controls for the slideshow if you hover your mouse in the upper right corner. I’ll be adding more as I can, but there are enough uploaded to while away a few minutes dreaming of travel…

Lambeth Palace

Lambeth Palace
Lambeth Palace, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

Lambeth, South Bank, London

From Wikipedia:

Lambeth Palace is the official London residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury. It is located in Lambeth, on the south bank of the River Thames a short distance upstream of the Palace of Westminster on the opposite shore.

It was acquired by the archbishopric around 1200. Lambeth Palace Road is to the west, Lambeth Road is to the south and Lambeth Bridge is to the south-west

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambeth_Palace

not a particularly inviting place, is it?

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Lived Here 1764

Composed his first symphony here.

Belgravia, London

http://www.thewordtravels.com/Mozart-London.html

Leopold Mozart moved his family here on 5 August 1764 to recuperate from a chill and sore throat caught at an open-air concert at the Earl of Thanet’s home in Grosvenor Square. A blue plaque commemorates their stay.

In order to occupy himself Mozart composed his first two symphonies, K16 and K19. ‘Nanner’ transcribed the composition sitting at his side, and reminded him ‘to give the horn something worthwhile to do’.

William Hazlitt Died Here 1830

William Hazlitt Died Here 1830
William Hazlitt Died Here 1830, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

SoHo somewhere

from his Wikipedia entry:

William Hazlitt (10 April 1778 – 18 September 1830) was an English writer, remembered for his humanistic essays and literary criticism, and as a grammarian and philosopher. He is now considered one of the great critics and essayists of the English language, placed in the company of Samuel Johnson and George Orwell, but his work is currently little-read and mostly out of print. During his lifetime he befriended many people who are now part of the 19th-century literary canon, including Charles and Mary Lamb, Stendhal, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Hazlitt

Now a boutique hotel
www.hazlittshotel.com/


“Selected Writings (Oxford World’s Classics)” (William Hazlitt)

Rufus Isaacs

Rufus Isaacs
Rufus Isaacs, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

First Marquess of Reading, Lawyer and Statesman, lived and died here, 1860-1935

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rufus_Isaacs,_1st_Marquess_of_Reading

Rufus Isaacs, 1st Marquess of Reading, GCB, GCSI, GCIE, GCVO, PC, KC (10 October 1860 – 30 December 1935), was an English lawyer, jurist and politician. Both of his wives were Dames Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire (GBE). The son of a Jewish fruit merchant at Spitalfields, Rufus Daniel Isaacs was educated at University College School, and then entered the family business at the age of fifteen. In 1876-77 he served as a ships-boy and later worked as a jobber on the stock-exchange, 1880-84. He was called to the bar, the Middle Temple, in 1887.

Isaacs garnered fame in the Bayliss v. Coleridge libel suit in 1903, and the Whitaker Wright case in 1904. In 1904, he entered the House of Commons as Liberal Party Member of Parliament (MP) for the Reading constituency, a seat he held until 1913. During this period, he served as both Solicitor General and Attorney-General in the government of Herbert Henry Asquith, becoming the first Attorney-General to sit in the Cabinet in 1912. He led for the prosecution in the Seddon poisoning case in 1912. In 1913, he was made Lord Chief Justice, a position in which he served until 1921.

In 1918, Isaacs was appointed Ambassador to the United States, a position in which he served until 1919, while continuing at the same time as Lord Chief Justice. In 1921, he resigned the chief justiceship to become Viceroy of India. Although he preferred a conciliatory policy, he ended up using force on several occasions, and imprisoned Mahatma Gandhi in 1922. In MacDonald’s National Government in August 1931, he briefly served as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, but stood down after the first major reshuffle in November due to ill-health.

Isaacs lived at Foxhill House in Earley, adjoining Reading, and was elevated to the Peerage as Baron Reading, of Erleigh in the County of Berkshire, in 1914, and continued to rise in the Peerage: he was created Viscount Reading, of Erleigh in the County of Berkshire, in 1916; Earl of Reading along with the subsidiary title of Viscount Erleigh, of Erleigh in the County of Berkshire, in 1917; and eventually Marquess of Reading in 1926. This is the highest rank in the Peerage reached by a Jew in British history. He was knighted in 1910, made a KCVO in 1911, a GCB in 1915, a GCSI and GCIE in 1921 (upon appointment as Viceroy of India) and a GCVO in 1922

Isaacs married Alice Edith Cohen in 1887. Alice, Lady Reading, appointed GBE, was a chronic invalid, who eventually died of cancer in 1927, a year after Reading’s viceroyalty ended, after 40 years of marriage. He then married Stella Charnaud, the first Lady Reading’s secretary. Stella Isaacs was later made a life peeress as Baroness Swanborough, of Swanborough, County Sussex, and later a Dame Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire (GBE). His second marriage lasted until his own death in 1935.

Nelson’s Column

Nelson’s Column
Nelson’s Column, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

“Well, I’m a lonesome schoolboy”
“And I just came into town”

Shot with my Hipstamatic for iPhone
Lens: John S
Flash: Off
Film: Pistil

Trafalgar Square, London

From Wikipedia:

Nelson’s Column is a monument in Trafalgar Square in London built to commemorate the death of Admiral Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. The monument was constructed between 1840 and 1843 to a design by William Railton at a cost of £47,000. The sandstone statue of Nelson is by E. H. Baily and the four bronze lions on the base, added in 1867, were sculpted by Sir Edwin Landseer. The column itself is built of granite from Dartmoor.

The column was built between 1840 and 1843 to commemorate Admiral Horatio Nelson’s death at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. The monument was designed by architect William Railton in 1838, and built by the firm Peto & Grissell. Railton’s original 1:22-scale stone model is exhibited at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London. The entire monument was built at a cost of £47,500, or £3.5 million in 2004 terms (roughly $6.1 million US).

The 5.5 m (18 ft) sandstone statue at the top was sculpted by E. H. Baily, a member of the Royal Academy, who also sculpted Earl Grey’s statue on top of Grey’s Monument in Newcastle; a small bronze plaque crediting him is at the base of the statue. The statue faces south looking towards the Admiralty and Portsmouth where Nelson’s & the Royal Navy Flagship HMS Victory is docked, with the Mall on his right flank, where Nelson’s ships are represented on the top of each flagpole.

The statue stands on top of a 46 m (151 ft) column built of granite from the Foggintor quarries on Dartmoor. The top of the Corinthian column (based on one from the Temple of Mars Ultor in Rome) is decorated with bronze acanthus leaves cast from British cannon. The square pedestal is decorated with four bronze panels, cast from captured French guns, depicting Nelson’s four great victories. These panels were undertaken by the sculptors Musgrave Watson, John Ternouth, William F Woodington, and John Edward Carew. Part of the interior base was made from the 29 cannon recovered from HMS Royal George, HMS Victory’s sister ship. The four lions, by Sir Edwin Landseer, at the column’s base were added after much delay in 1867. In 1925 a Scottish confidence trickster, Arthur Furguson, “sold” the landmark to an unknowing American (he also “sold” Big Ben and Buckingham Palace). The column also had some symbolic importance to Adolf Hitler. If Hitler’s plan to invade Britain, Operation Sealion, had been successful, he planned to move it to Berlin.

London Eye

London Eye
London Eye, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

Shot with my Hipstamatic for iPhone
Lens: John S
Flash: Off
Film: Pistil

From Wikipedia

The Merlin Entertainments London Eye (commonly the London Eye, or Millennium Wheel, formerly the British Airways London Eye) is a giant 135-metre (443 ft) tall Ferris wheel situated on the banks of the River Thames in the British capital. It is the tallest Ferris wheel in Europe, and the most popular paid tourist attraction in the United Kingdom, visited by over 3.5 million people annually. When erected in 1999, it was the tallest Ferris wheel in the world, until surpassed first by the 160 m (520 ft) Star of Nanchang in 2006, and then the 165 m (541 ft) Singapore Flyer in 2008. It is still described by its operators as “the world’s tallest cantilevered observation wheel” (as the wheel is supported by an A-frame on one side only, unlike the Nanchang and Singapore wheels). The London Eye is located at the western end of Jubilee Gardens, on the South Bank of the River Thames in the London Borough of Lambeth in England, between Westminster Bridge and Hungerford Bridge.

(click to continue reading London Eye – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.)

Cash For Your Warhol

Cash For Your Warhol
Cash For Your Warhol, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

Ok then, I’ll have to look.

Piccadilly Circus somewhere, London

www.artinfo.com/news/story/31149/cash-for-your-warhol/

BOSTON—Art collectors who need some quick cash and happen to own a work by Andy Warhol may be in luck. A new Web site has appeared, called Cash for Your Warhol, which promises to quickly sell your piece by the famed Pop artist “regardless of the size, price, or condition.”

“Our nationwide network of investors has helped lots of art collectors in situations like yours,” the site reads. “They can often make you a written offer within hours of contacting us, regardless of economic conditions, and have your problems solved within days.”

Is it real? Too good (or crass) to be true? Well, maybe. Created by Boston-based artist Geoff Hargadon, the site was inspired by the “Cash for Your House” signs that Hargadon has seen in neighborhoods hit particularly hard by the recession. He commissioned the same Texas company that produces the “Cash for Your House” signs to create “Cash for Your Warhol” signs, which he has posted around Boston, including near Brandeis University’s Rose Art Museum, whose future remains uncertain after the president of Brandeis announced in January that the school would dissolve the museum and sell off its collection.