The White Book
Graphic design: Sandra Krastiņa
research Dolf Pauw
Jānis Jaunsudrabiņš (1877–1962) was a famous Latvian author and painter. His life and work were imbued with bright light and clear vision. Having come from the countryside, Jaunsudrabiņš was well familiar with the life on the traditional Latvian farm and its intimate connection to the cycles of nature. As many Latvians he, too, had to experience personally the dramatic shifts and collisions of the 20th century. During World War I, Jaunsudrabiņš shared the fate of many refugees in Northern Caucasus; then he experienced peace and relative prosperity of newly independent Latvia and familiarised himself with Western culture. At the end of World War II, Jaunsudrabiņš was once again a refugee – this time in Germany where he settled in Kerbeck, living there until his death in 1962. In 1997, Jaunsudrabiņš was reburied in Latvia, near his Nereta birthplace.
During a stay at the writers' retreat Burtnieku Nams on the outskirts of Riga, Jaunsudrabiņš started writing his masterpiece,
"The White Book", one of the most outstanding works of Latvian literature. The first part of it was published in 1914 and the second followed in 1921.
LINK Bank of Latvia
Overschilderschilderij Painting 141
'The Overschilderschilderij' (oil paint, 50 cm x 60 cm, 2002-present) Since May 24 2002, artist Daan den Houter has invited art painters to make an oil painting on the same canvas. Each painting is shown for 1 week in the smallest gallery
from Rotterdam: De Aanschouw (Witte de Withstraat 80b, Rotterdam). Then the canvas goes to the next painter for a new layer. In 2012 this work was nominated for the Royal Dutch Painters Award. In 2014 it hung in honor of the 100th layer, in a solo presentation in the Boijmans van Beuningen museum. The previous works can be viewed at aanschouw.nl
LINK aanschouw
For Baba's birthday today (99) in Plovdiv Bulgaria
Valia Balkanska is part of the Voyager Golden Record selection of music
Valya Mladenova Balkanska (Bulgarian: Валя Младенова Балканска) (born 8 January 1942) is a Bulgarian folk music singer from the Rhodope Mountains known locally for her wide repertoire of Balkan folk songs, but in the West mainly for singing the song "Izlel ye Delyo Haydutin", part of the Voyager Golden Record selection of music included in the two Voyager spacecraft launched in 1977.
Born in a hamlet near the village of Arda, Smolyan Province, Balkanska has been singing Rhodope folk songs since her early childhood. She performs a repertoire of over 300 songs in Bulgaria and abroad. Balkanska is most famous in the West for "Izlel ye Delyo Haydutin", which she recorded in 1968 accompanied by the bagpipe (gaida) players Lazar Kanevski and Stephan Zahmanov. Her best-known recording was made in the late 1960s by the American explorer of Bulgarian folklore Martin Koening and was released on vinyl in the United States. A few years later, a specimen of the record accidentally fell among the purchased records for the preparation of the Golden Record, a message from the Earth to fly out of the Solar System aboard two identical spacecraft from the NASA Voyager program. The song was included in the final 90-minute musical selection by Carl Sagan and flew first on the Voyager 2, which was launched on August 20, 1977, and two weeks later on September 5, 1977, on the Voyager 1. On August 25, 2012, Voyager 1 became the first object of human origin to leave the Heliosphere and to enter Interstellar medium. LINK The song (Youtube)
Petia and Dolf Rotterdam The Netherlands
