Paul Klee makes it a major news item on the Yahoo Home Page

Paul Klee

What the article does not mention that he became a Swiss citizen after his death. Apparently the Swiss did not want to claim him in life, but wanted his legacy after his death. Though he was born in the capital, Bern he was not Swiss. As his father was German and mother was Swiss, he had to take German citizenship. Were the roles reserved he would have become Swiss the day he was born.

He does hold the time honored distinction of being kicked out of Germany by the Nazis. Had he been allowed to stay it's hard to say what is legacy would have been.

BERN, Switzerland - When Paul Klee applied for Swiss nationality after fleeing Nazi Germany, his request was refused because it was feared that if his art should "take root in Switzerland, it would insult real art and cause good taste to deteriorate."


Sixty-six years later, the work of the painter — now considered one of the greatest modern artists — has found a permanent home in Bern, the Swiss capital that finally accepted him. The Zentrum Paul Klee, which opens Monday, will house over 4,000 pieces of Klee's creations — one of the world's largest collections from a single artist.

Paul Klee

I am an Internet genius!!!

no, not really

but 14 months after creating this site and 12 years in the Information Technology industry, the last 5 with a dot com, I actually have a site that can be googled.

I was looking at one of my traffic reports listing a Whopping 247 vistors since December 11,2004 and saw google as one of my referers.

Someone one at the Italian version of Google (http://www.google.it/search) (Cerca con Google) had done on search on "Clint Eastwood LAUREL" and my site popped up and they went to it.

can't get enough of the "Span"!!!!

The blogging continues

Yes, I'm probably one of the few people out there who will actually pay to download author interviews from C-Span. But I've found a gold mine in the I-Tunes "Music Store".

Just do a search on "Brian Lamb" and you will see 104 "songs" in the search results. Yet, these are not songs of a musical nature but the product of the genius that is known as Brian Lamb.

After my near miss (at least I think I was close) at the Jeopardy try-outs in Chicago I spent a lot of time studying US Presidents. So I downloaded author interviews Mr Lamb had made with Presidential scholars. At 1 hour a piece, it's a quicker way to assimilate info then to read the whole book. So I did learn a good deal about McKinley, Teddy Roosevelt, James K Polk, Warren Harding, Franklin Pierce.

I highly recommend these "songs".

My latest foray has been into 20th century Soviet history. Of course there is a limitless supply of literature on Stalin. C-Span was kind enough to record not one but two hours of interview with the author of this book:

The Court of the Red Tsar

I checked out the book from the library ( I need to save some money after all those I-Tunes downloads). It's pretty interesting but the infinite cast of characters, intriguing and subterfuge makes "Anna Karenina" look like a nursery rhyme.

Stay tuned.