The “People’s Choice Award” is given to the portfolio that has the highest number of votes.

Please follow the ARTISTS WANTED link below, scroll to the bottom of the portfolio, and click on the number of stars – that’s it!

You can vote once per day throughout the contest period!

Share the link with all your friends, and THANKS!

Artists Wanted

No one can remember a 13 year old horse having won in New York in recent memory.

According to one publication, the oldest horses to win since 1976 are Behavin Jerry, who did so at age 17 in 1981 at Commodore Downs in Pennsylvania, and Golden Arrow, who won in 1978 at the Great Barrington Fair, also at age 17.

France has recovered only 45 of the 72 stolen René Descartes letters.

One was offered at an auction in Switzerland in 2006 and 2009.

After I protested vociferously and publicly on both occasions in the name of the Institut, the letter didn’t find a buyer,but it proved impossible for us to raise the very large sum that the seller demanded, and even though it can’t be sold, this 1638 letter remains in private hands, reports Gabriel de Broglie, chancellor of the Institut de France.

Erik-Jan Bos, a philosophy scholar at Utrecht University in the Netherlands is helping to edit a new edition of Descartes’s correspondence. During a late night session of Internet browsing,  he noticed a reference to Descartes in a description of the manuscript collection at Haverford College in Pennsylvania. He contacted John Anderies, the head of special collections at Haverford, who sent him a scan of the letter, dated May 27, 1641.

It turns out the letter had been donated in 1902 to Haverford’s library by Lucy Branson Roberts, whose husband, Charles Roberts, was an avid autograph collector. He had bought the letter without knowing that it was stolen.

As soon as Haverford’s president, Stephen G. Emerson, understood the letter’s history, he contacted the Institut de France coincidentally on February 11, the anniversary of Descartes’ death in 1650 and offered to return the item.

I was frankly shocked because I didn’t know we had the letter at all but it’s really not ours, said Emerson.

Delighted by the college’s offer, Mr. de Broglie awarded Haverford a prize of  $20,000, writing to Mr. Emerson that the offer honors you and exemplifies the depth of moral values that you instill in your students.

We couldn’t be more pleased with how this has been resolved, concludes Emerson.  In our ever-shrinking world, when strangers become friends and then partners at the click of a mouse, we want to do all we can to show, by example, what it means for scholars and citizens to collaborate for the common good.

Unless the chamber reverses itself, it will be the first time in more than 20 years that the public or its representatives has decided to close a reactor.

Vermont senators voiced frustration over recent leaks of radioactive tritium at the 38 year old plant as well as the collapse of a cooling tower in 2007 and inaccurate testimony by the plant’s owner, Entergy.

Plant officials had testified under oath to two state panels that there were no buried pipes at Vermont Yankee that could leak tritium, although there were. No tritium has turned up in drinking water, but even plant supporters expressed dismay at the leak and the misstatements.

If the board of directors and management of Entergy were thoroughly infiltrated by antinuclear activists, I do not think they could have done a better job of destroying their own case, said Senator Randolph D. Brock II.

The May 4, 1970 campus shootings site was added even though it did not meet the criteria that events being recognized had to have happened at least 50 years ago.

It was something those students deserved, said Mark Seeman, a Kent State anthropology professor  (and I have had the honor of being a student in his class – one of my favorites) who helped write the 150 page application. Now, this place will be recognized by the government of the US as a place where history important to this nation took place.

Jerry M. Lewis, 73, a Kent professor emeritus who was there in 1970, said what took place that day was a very crucial event, not only of the Vietnam era, but the student activism experience.

Reacting to the shootings, President Richard M. Nixon said they should remind us all once again that when dissent turns to violence, it invites tragedy.

The emerald has been named Insofu, which translates to elephant in the vernacular of the indigenous Bemba people of the region.

The largest uncut emerald believed to have been found was in Carnaiba, Brazil in 1974. It was an unbelievable 86,136 carat natural beryl crystal. The stone was valued at $1,120,080.

The largest emerald crystal ever discovered was 7,025 carats and was found in a mine in Colombia.

The issue was an anthology of comics, but  featured the first appearance of the Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster creation Superman. The inside front cover  had a house ad for a Color-Page Contest which required contestants to color a black-and-white page and mail it in to enter. Unfortunately for collectors, the page that the contestants had to tear out of the book was on the back of the last page of the Superman story.

Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were paid $10 per page, for a total of $130 for their work on this issue.

The first issue had a print run of 200,000 copies of the 68 page comic.

There are only about 100 copies of Action Comics # 1 believed to be in existence, and only a handful are in collectible condition.

John Dolmayan, owner of Torpedo Comics and the drummer for System of a Down paid $317,000 for an Action Comics #1. Others have sold for more than $400,000.

An un-restored issue  graded Very Fine – 8.0 was put for sale today and within minutes was sold for $1,000,000.

The fact that this book is completely un-restored and still has an 8.0 grade, it’s kind of like a diamond or a precious stone. It’s very rare, Dolmayan said.

I’m not here to raise money or your consciousness.

I’m not protesting or trying to convert you.

I’ve got no message whatsoever.

So says Lee The Horselogger Crafton, who has been traveling across the country since 2006 in a barn on wheels. Lee‘s Montana ranch was sold out from under him, then he was diagnosed with cancer…so he took his life savings of $75 and a couple of log pulling horses and set off to see America.

He estimates he has “logged” nearly 8,000 miles, traveling as far east as Boston.

When he was diagnosed in 2005, he didn’t know what to do. He was leery about chemotherapy or radiation where they poison the piss out of you.

In lieu of health insurance which he didn’t and still doesn’t have, Lee tried naturopathic herbal treatments and the pioneer life as his own way of slowing down to take on his cancer.

He started taking chaparral, graviola, plantain and other herbs with alleged cancer fighting attributes. And then sat on a wooden seat and watched America roll by, at 3 miles per hour. Only it didn’t roll by. America befriended him. Accounts in small town newspapers often note that he talked to 100 people by 10 am or that he met most of the town in an afternoon.

There’s something about him that makes you stop and say to yourself: ‘What am I doing with my life?’ Cindy Harff, one of the people he met, says.

Being out here, in this community, is part of my treatment, of how I take care of myself, Lee says.  The traveling takes a physical toll — I’ve gone through minus 36 degrees on up to 106. But if you’re unhappy and you’re under stress, you’re not going to get well.

Amazingly, Lee is now cancer free.

His three horses – Max, Tom and Fey – pull his covered wagon, plus a supply wagon behind it. They are Suffolk punch horses, an English draught horse known for size and work ethic. The breed was first mentioned in in William Camden‘s Britannia, published in 1586.

The primary wagon is insulated and designed for high winds and it has a stove.

Lee’s Great Pyrenees dog, Katie, keeps him company.

He called his personal journey a little quest and says his destination is Alaska.

Why Alaska?

Because it’s there.

The 3,700 fading yellow pages of Histoire de ma Vie – Story of my Life – were found packed in a dozen boxes which had been transferred to a safe in the basement of a bank  just days before the allied bombing of Leipzig in 1945.

It is one of the most published texts in the world with hundreds and hundreds of publications and … they have always been corrected, simplified, falsified. So what is important for us is to find the authentic truth, said Bruno Racine, head of Bibliotheque Nationale de France.

The library hopes the manuscript will be on exhibit by Autumn 2011.

Turns out, it is directly behind my beloved Sergio‘s! And, had I known how the night was going to go, I would have had a better time just driving up there for orrecchiette and Brazilian presspot and  fried spinach and coconut cake.

Anyway, I was walking down an alley in the dark, illuminated by some substantial snow, and I heard the unmistakable sounds of Mary Martin‘s incredible guitar playing, and simply followed the sounds into the club.

As I mentioned, I’d never been there. It looks like a combination Swedish sauna / ski lodge that has been squatted by a gang of very impassioned hippies, complete with a red, free standing woodburning fireplace in the left corner, lovingly tended to by the staff all night. And oddly, though it is “no smoking” inside, incense was burning at the bar.

Another loving touch was a gorgeous Golden Retriever wandering around greeting everyone – fire, music, coffee, dog and a vista of snow glimpsed through the windows – that is just not bad I’m telling you.

It’s been a good long time since I’ve had the pleasure of hearing Mary and her playing is even more commanding, evocative and impressive as ever. And she still is playing the great unvarnished Les Paul. Her voice is not what is was, but does bring a welcome authenticity to the blues.

The set was short – from 8 to 9:30 with a ten minute intermission, so I didn’t get to hear as much I’d I would have liked – but still, you have to go out and hear music being performed, and show your support for those who are DOING it.

The effort is not much for the experience.

GO HEAR LIVE MUSIC!