Vermeer and the Delft Style

The Metropolitan Art Museum in Ueno-Koen will be holding an exhibit from August 2nd to December 14th featuring seven (SEVEN!) paintings by Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675). Delft was Vermeer's home town and the "Delft Style" is best known for its images of 17th century domestic life by Vermeer and Pieter de Hooch.

There are only 36 of Vermeer's works in the world and to have seven of them in one place is remarkable. To have them within a stone's throw of us is fantastic.

Canaris
from the M.L. Lutebook, 26r, performed by Thomas Berghan, 2001

We have our tickets already and just need to pick a date. To buy tickets online (you can print them out at home) visit this page: Vermeer and the Delft Style (English)

From the (excellent) website Essential Vermeer: "The Vermeer paintings included in the exhibition are: The Little Street,Diana and her Companions, The Girl with the Wineglass, Woman with a Lute, Christ in the House of Martha and Mary, The Art of Painting, and the recently re-attributed A Young Woman Seated at the Virginals which is rarely on public view. The exhibition also features the miniscule masterpiece View of Delft by Carel Fabritius, a splendid view of Delft by Van der Heyden and two fine De Hoogh’s."

K has seen "The Art of Painting" before, on exhibit in Tokyo. Although I visited the Rijksmuseum which has four of his works as a college student the only paintings that I recall from that visit are by Rembrandt. The National Art Gallery in London also has 4 of his works, but on that day (1988) I was being followed by the police and knew it, so can't recall much of anything I saw there that day.

Anyway, I'm really happy to get to see these.

Aluminum is Recycleable

A couple of pictures showing Lewis and his student and the Cessna Cutlass in which they made an emergency landing. Airplanes we can replace. Smiling pilots? Priceless.

Making the Six O'clock News

My first flight instructor used to tell me, "Any landing you can walk alway from is a good one". I always wondered if he would still say that if I really bent his airplane, but happily I never found out.

Well, my nephew Lewis who, as you may recall from the posts "Celebrity Alert" and "The Aviator" is a flight instructor at Santa Monica Airport in Southern California, actually proved it the other day!

Here's Lewis in the video featured in "The Aviator" post, standing by the Cessna Cutlass in which he made the emergency landing.

He was giving a graduation exam for a student who was working on his commercial pilot's license. Flying over Simi Valley, California, in the school's Cessna Cutlass 172RG they were preparing to do a maneuver required by the FAA for the check ride. It's called "eights on pylons" and consists of flying low level figure eights around two ground reference points.

After descending, the student applied throttle to level out before they reached the area - a farm - over which they would fly the eights. As he did so, nothing happened. The engine continued to just idle merrily along. Uh-oh (polite version). Apparently there was a problem with the throttle linkage. No time to ponder that now...

The farm they had been heading for was on the other side of a freeway and it did not look like they would be able to glide over it. They were over a field already, but it was small, and they were not lined up for it.

The student asked Lewis to take control. Lewis lowered the gear and flaps and put the plane into a side slip to lose altitude quickly while they were still over the field, all the while turning to get the longest landing area possible. I'm sure that all his own training came to mind - things all pilots have drilled into them in one form or another - never stop flying the airplane, what happens to the plane is not important, your survival is, watch thine airspeed or the ground shall rise up and smite thee, and so on. Perhaps different words or it was all automatic, but all his skill was brought to bear on getting them down safely.

(above) Frame from the aerial news coverage. Click on the picture to see the video. To clarify - the news got it wrong, there were just the two of them in the plane, not the 3 or 4 mentioned by the reporter.

As they got lower they were running out of level ground. As he was pulling up, the nose wheel hit a lip or berm and they bounced and flipped upside down, stopping only about 40 feet from where the nose gear hit.

The good news is that they both walked away and suffered only minor cuts and bruises. "Any landing you can walk away from.... "

His dad - a retired United Air Lines pilot - picked them up from Simi Valley Hospital and returned them to Santa Monica Airport.

Lewis had stayed on the controls through the whole landing (crash) so has more sore muscles than his student and a splint on one wrist, but as he put it, he may be sore, but he has a big smile on his face. He's got a little time off to recuperate and spend some quality time with his wife Kris and their two children.

Good landing, Lewis! Love you. Stay safe out there.

Mermaid II Completes Its Journey

Kenichi Horie on the Suntory Mermaid II wave powered boat has reached his goal in the Kii Channel between capes of Hinomisaki, Wakayama Prefecture, and Kamodamisaki, Tokushima Prefecture, Japan.



His voyage began March 23rd when he left Honolulu, Hawaii. Powered only by wave action on the 33 foot all aluminum catamaran's flipper propulsion system, he was expected to make Japan by late May. Small waves and contrary currents made for a slower crossing.


Mr. Horie covered 6100 km (about 4000 miles) in 109 days using wave power alone. He also had a 650 watt solar electric system that powered his lights, radio, and microwave oven.

Omedetou gozaimasu Horie-san! Congratulations on yet another inspiring ocean voyage demonstrating the principles of recycling and sustainable energy. Who knows how this wave propulsion technology might be improved and implemented in the future?

As Kenichi Horie said before leaving Hawaii, "Oil is a limited power source, but there is no limit to waves."