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Loving - The Movie. A beautiful portrayal of a forgotten civil rights story

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Ruth Negga (2 nd from right) stars as Mildred and Joel Edgerton (right) stars as Richard in Jeff Nichols LOVING, a Focus Features release. Credit : Ben Rothstein / Focus Features   Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving grew up in the rural unincorporated town of Central Point, Virginia. They met in high school, spent time together, and eventually, when Mildred became pregnant, decided to marry. But this was the 1950’s and Mildred was African American and Richard was white. Virginia had anti-miscegenation laws which made their marriage illegal. How did these two young people get beyond Jim Crow and fall in love? Well that had a lot to with Central Point VA. Central Point was and is still a very rural area. At a distance of about 90 miles south east from Washington DC it was community with a history of poor farmers, black and white, ignoring the rules of segregation, living together. According to a 2012 article in the Washington Post , Central Point and Caroline Count...

A walk through Naples, Italy - Part 1

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    Every city has its own look and feel. When I had the chance to visit Naples for a day, it gave me the opportunity to get a taste of its flavor.  The group I was with started by exploring the historic center of the city, walking from the Garibaldi train station to the Piazza Gesú Nuovo. This trek follows one basic path, but the street changes its name every few blocks, when it encounters a small piazza. The area has a long history as a center of commerce, and it is still home to many stores. While many of the businesses cater to the many tourists that visit this neighborhood, there are also many that have been here for decades, if not longer.  Of course, this center of Neapolitan life has also been home to many churches. One that caught my eye was the Capella di San Michele Arcangelo a Pistes. Its dark open doorway had curtain across it, but it hinted at master work inside, a huge diorama of the life of Jesus. Another was the Chiesa dei Santos Filippo e Giacomo. T...

A visit to the Whitney Museum and The High Line in New York City

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  The Whitney Museum is the home of contemporary art in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, after an offer of over 500 modern works of art to the Metropolitan Museum and was turned away. In 2014 the Whitney Museum of American Art moved into its third “permanent home”, a brand new building in the Meatpacking district of Manhattan. Today, the Whitney’s collection includes works by almost every major American artist of the 20th and 21st centuries. It also hosts major exhibitions and retrospectives.  photo by Beyond My Ken,  via Wikimedia commons Amy Sherald: American Sublime (through August 10, 2025)   The main show at the Whitney is a retrospective of the life work of Amy Sherald (b. 1973). Ms. Sherald is an African American painter who produces portraits that she describes as simplified realism. She presents her subjects against simple, usually monochromatic, backgrounds. Sherald’s subjects are all of African American descent, but s...