no squab this year since this is my first Easter away from my family...

SNAKEHIPS!!!

One of the Flavian Roman emperors, Vespasian, I think, had his last words reported as "Dear me, I must be turning into a god".

But that "dear me" is typical English bowdlerization. The Emperor's actual exclam was 'Vae', related to English 'woe'. A more suitable translation is "Oh crap I'm turning into a god".

I'd express it even more strongly myself, but there are the usual constraints.

39 ?

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39 ♗g6-b1!

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Game Collection: BLOCK THAT LINE!

It's a miracle that the "who has kibbutzeded the most" category is still in existence.

Thanks for your viewership and kind comments!

I am working on a video biography of the great <Wilhelm Steinitz> at the moment.

What a mensch!

<Paul Morphy: Mozart of Chess- Part four>

There is another chapter- it's a six part film. Morphy lived long past the end of the Civil War.

Plus here's a neat clip from 1966 showing the impact of The Beatles and their charisma! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4zi...

At first I thought it was a pair of albino meerkats hunting squab, but then I saw Michelangelo's David doing an ostrich. Like Planet of the Apes without Chuck Heston or Liberty.

I love that kind of honesty and self-deprecation from an artist.

Speaking of honesty and self-deprecation, Morphy had these qualities instilled to the very core of his being- both by his "genteel upbringing in manners" and his natural patience and good nature.

I don't think the DAVID DIVING IN TO THE GROUND image in any way sums up anything at all about Morphy- (although I like the photo immensely, truth be told)

I suggest you view my film series on Morphy, and much, much more instructive than that- check out every one of Sarah Beth's (Batgirl's) websites about Morphy history.

Her search is wide, well-documented, vast, comprehensive, revelatory, and convincing.

The reports of his "insanity" and the notion that he was "the pride and sorrow" of anything says a lot more about other people- meaning people who were not actually Morphy.

From her websites-

1. A link to a "scholarly medical paper" from a "scholarly journal" in the US which announced that Morphy was "locked up in an insane asylum" (he wasn't).

2. Letters from his lifelong friend Charles Maurian explaining that Morphy was neither insane nor suffering- and these letters make no attempt to "play down" the actual eccentricities and various paranoias about money that did plague Morphy's later years.

3. Steinitz's report on his meetings with Morphy, in which he paints the portrait of a man beleaugered by pesky fans, and unable to cope with not being rich anymore.

Morphy didn't want to play competitive chess ever again- but the "world" wouldn't let him alone.

I suppose that's natural.

Anways- love the art- but I don't see even a vague connection to anything to do with Morphy.

I suggest you do some homework on him.

Start with David Lawson's Biography- it's pretty decent, historiographically speaking. And in your defense, it *is* titled "The Pride and Sorrow".

I read it cover to cover two summers ago in Vancouver whilst on vacation.

I took it out of the Liberry- but now that I've discovered the wonderful world just stealing books outright off the internet, I may not need Liberries any more.

I just downloaded THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS worth of chessbooks, as <Niels> put it, including the canonical biography of <Steinitz>.

I'm researching a film on him at the moment and I can't believe how much I am enjoying the project.

Ok I hope you saw the Duchamp playing chess photo I dropped in your forum a few weeks ago.

<Paul Morphy: Mozart of Chess- Part five>

I was getting at something like this: classical beauty, the epitome of youthful perfection, cut off in its prime, inverted, half-hidden ...

... is that *all* wrong?