Frida's Demons
We were lucky to catch the last weekend of the Frida Kahlo exhibit at the Dalí Museum!
This photo was captured with a Sony a6300.
Porgy and Snapper
This photo was captured with a Sony a6300.
Save the Turtles
The South Carolina Aquarium has added a Sea Turtle Care Center, which is a working exhibit designed to aid sick and injured sea turtles, ultimately returning them to the ocean once they're healthy. They even have sea turtle ambulances that are dispatched to recover injured turtles quickly for the help they require at the Care Center.
This photograph was captured with a Sony a6300.
Just Squint
This photograph was captured with a Sony a6300 at the Dalí Museum.
Memorial Day Jeep
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Frida at the Dalí
We visited the Dalí museum in St. Petersburg last week and were lucky enough to catch the Frida Kahlo exhibit just a few days before it closed. This was the very appropriate entry wall introducing the exhibit.
This past week, I've been reading "Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy" by Nicholas Reynolds. It explores Ernest Hemingway's political views and his likely unintentional ties with the Soviet Union, led by the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs, also known as the NKVD. the NKVD was a broad-reaching public and secret police force that was also charged with espionage and enforcing Stalinist policies within communist movements around the world. The book alleges the NKVD actively sought to recruit Hemingway and suggests they were able to use him as a tool for the communist message while he was in Spain covering and fighting the Facist Franco.
For his part, Hemingway was a very staunch and early supporter of the anti-Facist movement in Spain, Italy and Germany. In the early days, the USA turned a blind eye to the original Axis of Evil between Germany, Italy and Spain. The Soviet Union was fighting the Facists for the rest of the world when Hemingway found himself in Spain. Naturally, he met and developed relationships with many good Soviets and Communists who were rightly taking up arms against the Facists.
In an abrupt turnaround in 1939 — just before the outbreak of WWII — Stalin's Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact with Hitler's Nazi Germany. This shocked many who thought Russia's fighters were the largest force fighting against the rise of Facism. Accordingly, many previous communist party members around the world denounced the party. Many were put on Soviet hitlists. Many of the Soviet fighters from Spain were forced to seek refuge elsewhere lest they return to the Soviet Union and were disappeared by the NKVD since the Soviet doctrine had changed while they were away.
Frida Kahlo's companion and husband, Diego Rivera, found himself mixed up in the Soviet policies as a member of the Mexican Communist Party ten years earlier. He was expelled from the party and ordered to leave the Soviet Union where he was painting a mural for the Red Army Club in Moscow when the NKVD suggested he was involved in anti-Soviet politics.
Hemingway and Diego Rivera had become friends and Hemingway, who thought Rivera's life was under threat from the NKVD, gave his friend a pistol to protect himself from assassins. Hemingway may have been on to something as Rivera's friend and former leader of the Red Army, Leon Trotsky was assassinated by the NKVD in Mexico City in 1940.
Perhaps Frida's husband was next?
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Nautilus — Living Dinosaur
People often call the Nautilus a living dinosaur but they're wrong. The Nautilus is 500 million years old. Dinosaurs didn't roam this earth until 230 million years ago.
The Nautilus lives thousands of feet deep in the ocean waters of Andaman, Fiji and the Great Barrier Reef. In scientific studies, the Nautilus has proven to have both short-term and long-term memory when exposed to Pavlov-style tests using lights and food.
This Nautilus lives at the Riverbanks Zoo. When my Wild Kratt's-loving son saw it, he nearly lost his mind he was so excited! He announced to everybody within 100 feet that it was older than dinosaurs.
This photograph was captured with a Sony a6300.
Aquarium Excitement
Columbia's Riverbanks Zoo & Garden is a perfectly-sized zoo. Everything has been modernized and they have a really diverse array of animals. They even have an aquarium, stocked with sharks, moray eels and other saltwater favorites.
When you're armed with a camera, it's sometimes hard to take a step back and see the action through others' eyes. But if you do, and the heavens align, something special happens. The little girl pressed up against the glass is my daughter and I managed to capture her excitement just as all of the other kids stepped back into the shadows.
This photograph was captured with a Sony a6300.
The Firebird. Name checks out.
This giant, glittering sculpture welcoming guests to The Bechtler Museum of Modern Art is called the Firebird. Visit when the sun is shining onto the sculpture and it really comes alive.
Created by Niki de Saint Phalle, The Firebird pulls guests in from the street to experience the Bechtler.
This photograph was captured with a Sony a6300.