v a l l e j o n o c t u r n o

Bush Toy Set

Bush's Butcher shop Toy Set

The Naked and the Clothed

In the Netherlands nudity is part of life. . .

"The Netherlands is a liberal country where public nakedness is allowed, and that's the way it should be -- that's why there's a law for it," says Ragna Verwer of the Dutch Naturist Federation (NFN), a 70,000-member-strong organization established to expand naturist activities.

According to Verwer, 1.9 million Dutch regularly get nude, going to nude beaches or stripping down in their own gardens, though she estimates the numbers are much higher as NFN doesn't include sauna-goers in its research. "Naked recreation is well accepted here. But we have to take care that things stay this way, which is why we often discuss these matters with local city councils and recreation areas to create more places."

Legally, in Netherlands people are allowed to be naked anywhere except public roads or when they annoy others, a law in play since 1986. It is not uncommon to find nude swimming sessions at public swimming pools, nude or topless beaches. Recently, Fitworld, a gym in Heteren in the eastern Netherlands, introduced Naked Sunday, offering locals the opportunity for bare workouts. This quickly proved a popular idea -- at least with journalists, photographers and television crews, who easily outnumbered participants on the opening day.

"I've done interviews with people from Russia, Ireland, Canada, Australia, America and Turkey," says Fitworld's owner, Patrick de Man, who says Naked Sunday was in part a competitive response to other gyms offering pole dancing courses, but also a response to a request from two of his naturist clients. De Man says the amount of attention he received both from home and abroad was surprising because "being naked is absolutely normal here," though admittedly, bare bench presses were totally new to Holland. But the owner has also received complaints from locals, mostly about sanitation, and at least one member wrote on the club's website that he was switching gyms.

Bush Boy

ala Rockwell

e.j. winter's sleeping people

sleeping people in transition by e.j. winter at flickr

Stanley Kunitz

Day of Foreboding
Stanley Kunitz

Great events are about to happen.
I have seen migratory birds
in unprecedented numbers
descend on the coastal plain,
picking the margins clean.
My bones are a family in their tent
huddled over a small fire
waiting for the uncertain signal
to resume the long march.

Volcano the bear

Volcano the Bear

seajohn3342 at flickr

seanjohn3342 at flickr

Disapearing moments

Ghosts of Seoul by Superketch

The Rennovation of Easter

Vallejo Nocturno 2007-Easter Sunday

Yesterday's anniversary-Modern War

From the LA Times, Guernica's birthdate:

Because Guernica had no air defenses, dozens of planes from the German and Italian air forces, including the newest experimental warplanes, were free to come in low in daylight, dropping with great accuracy an unusual payload of incendiary and splinter bombs chosen by the Germans for maximum destruction of buildings. People who fled were chased down by planes with heavy-caliber machine guns. The planes came in so low that there are still eyewitnesses who remember seeing the pilots and who note that they looked like Germans.

Three hours later, the planes were gone, the historic town had been reduced to burning rubble and the Basque government estimated that 1,645 civilians were dead out of a population of 7,000. It's hard to know just how accurate that number is. The only ones who had a chance to accurately count the dead were the rebel troops of Francisco Franco — on whose behalf the German and Italian planes had swept in in the first place. They at first denied that the attack had taken place; later, they admitted to only 200 deaths. The records of what they actually found have never been released. But given the intensity of the attack, reports of survivors and the number of missing relatives, the Basque government figure has been recognized as at least being closer to the truth.

Two days after the attack, London Times correspondent George Steer's eyewitness account was published in the London Times and the New York Times, and the world responded with outrage at this new type of warfare — randomly attacking civilians from the air on a large scale. It was widely seen as a crime that should never be allowed to happen again.

It was not the first time civilians had been bombed from the air; not even the first time in the Spanish Civil War. Gen. Emilio Mola of Franco's pro-fascist rebel forces had vowed to destroy the Basque province of Viscaya for its fierce opposition to the insurgency. "Starting with the industries of war," he had said. But instead he started with the rural town of Durango, a town of ancient churches, rambling cobblestone streets and no industries of war. Next was Guernica.

Durango had passed with little notice, but Guernica did not. Pablo Picasso, who had been commissioned by the Spanish government to paint a mural for the Spanish pavilion at the 1937 Paris World's Fair, chose Guernica as his subject, and his stark depiction of mayhem and destruction permanently fixed this image of war in Western culture. To many previously apolitical Americans and Britons, it was the bombing of Guernica that convinced them of the brutality of fascism.

Historians argue whether the phrase "weapons of mass destruction" was first used about Guernica or Hiroshima. Steer wrote in the Times: "In the form of its execution and the scale of its destruction … the raid … is unparalleled in military history." But 70 years after Guernica — after the bombings of Coventry, London, Hamburg, Dresden, Berlin, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Hanoi, Hue, Beirut and Baghdad — it has become clear that modern war is fought from the air and that the greatest number of casualties are civilians.