Shakespeare

Mythology  /  pop culture
Which Ides Of March Did You Mean?
March 15, 2016

A soothsayer bids you beware the ides of March.—Brutus, Julius Caesar Act 1, scene 2, 15–19

 

charles i. letbetter - which ides of march did you mean

With the death of Julius Caesar, it seems the oracle’s prophecy came true, but what if he meant a different Ides of March?

Yeah, yeah, we all know the Shakespearian version of how Caesar’s death went down. If that version were true, one might wonder why an extremely superstitious person like Julius Caesar didn’t stay home from the Senate that day. Take a look at Plutarch’s Life of Julius Caesar, though, and the oracle’s statement lacks the drama ol’ Willie gave it. Transliterating the Greek into contemporary English, it comes off more like, “Hey, ya’ might wanna watch your step there around the 15th of March or so.” Go ahead, toss in a Brooklyn accent and give the oracle a wide-brimmed grey fedora to hide his face, just for effect. We can see where Julius might not have thought homicide was in the offing for the day.

We assume that since JC and Brutus had that fatal encounter that the oracle’s prophecy was fulfilled. What if that wasn’t the Ides of March the soothsayer had in mind, though? What if his divination applied to a time much further into the future, a time that an ancient Roman would not have understood, one where the calendar was the only thing he recognised? What if that most fateful of March Ides has yet to happen?

Granted, a number of other bad things have happened on this date. Russia’s Czar Nicholas II didn’t find March 15 especially hospitable. Czechoslovakia was effectively wiped off the map on this date in 1939. My guess is CBS show runners still steer clear of Les Moonves today after the network had the balls to cancel “The Ed Sullivan Show” on this date. If one is even the tiniest bit superstitious, it’s best to just stay home and nap, which is pretty much what I’d like to do.

There’s always that chance, though, that the worst is yet to come. So, just to stoke those fires of fear and imagination, here are a few things that could make the Ides of March much, much worse than being stabbed in the back by your best friend.

  1. A very clumsy knife salesman could show up at your front door. This is why it is smart to keep your front door blocked with litter boxes. At least, that’s what we do. Any danger attempting to come through our front door gets stuck in cat poop. So far, that’s been a very strong deterrent. I’ve not had a single knife salesman show up in the past two years.
  2. The Internet could die. There’s a tremendous amount of redundancy built into the structure of the Internet, but a significant amount of communication between the US and the rest of the world is carried through a series of trans-ocean cabling and a shit ton of financial transactions take place on the Internet using that cabling. Cut these cables and we’re looking at full-scale economic meltdown faster than you can say, “Have you tried unplugging it and plugging it back in?”
  3. Weather could happen, especially if you live in Southern Louisiana or Texas. I’m guessing Shreveport is a rather moist place to be today and Interstate 10 is closed in some places. Some 3000 people were being evacuated last I looked. Those folks are not having a good Ides of March, but then, the past seven days haven’t been much of a picnic, either. The rest of the world, from what I can tell, is doing rather well in the weather department.
  4. The FBI could ask you to unlock your phone. Okay, so maybe you’ve not actually killed anyone yet, but you might have expressed some frustration toward a certain presidential candidate or four and we all know the NSA is watching that crap so they don’t have a repeat of the whole Bobby Kennedy thing. So, they could show up and ask to look at your phone, just to make sure you were kidding, you know. Don’t expect Tim Cook to have your back, he’s rather busy.
  5. Your parents could have named you Isis. I’m sure there’s some poor person out there who is currently looking into having their name changed because their mother, who was obsessed with ancient Egyptian mythology thought it would be cute to name their child after a goddess. We all know someone who’s suffered a similar misfortune. Talk about having a rough time getting credit …
  6. You could be an unpaid intern for a certain loud-mouthed presidential candidate. Talk about a perfect storm of bad luck. Interns, by job description, get all the worst assignments anyway, but to constantly have to put up with all that hot air and not get paid is a fate that may actually be worse than death. Don’t put this on your resumé.
  7. Starbucks could take your favorite drink off its menu. There are reasons I drink my coffee black. So many people I know are absolutely addicted to a very specific blend that only Starbucks baristas know how to make. Take these people to Italy and they are soooo screwed. Starbucks is known for switching up their menu from time to time. If they remove the wrong things, thousands of people just might die, or even worse, stab their barista.
  8. Your photographer could tell you his Dropbox has been hacked and those nude pictures you took for “someone special” are missing. Worse yet, #NakedHousewives just started trending. “Lucy, you have some ‘splainin’ to do.”
  9. Your lunch could be recalled 30 minutes after you ate it. There have been a lot of food recalls lately. You never know until it’s too late. That single-serve lasagna sure looked healthy in the picture on the cardboard container. Maybe you should have just eaten the cardboard.
  10. This could be your real life:

These are just some of the reasons we should beware every  Ides of March. One just never knows exactly which one that old soothsayer meant. No one bothered to ask. Damn you, Caesar. You’ve doomed us all.

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Photography  /  PotD
But Soft! What Light …
June 2, 2015
charles i. letbetter

charles i. letbetter

Comfortable With Here & Now (2010)

When I say I want to photograph someone, what it really means is that I’d like to know them. Anyone I know I photograph. – Annie Leibovitz

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]Shakespeare may not have been a photographer, but he certainly understood the emotional impact of a subject bathed in soft, natural light. Juliet, caught in the rays of a full moon, quickened the heart of the smitten Romeo to the point of tragedy. Dinner is most romantic when a couple has only the softness of candlelight illuminating their meal. Sitting on the porch in the soft light of a fading sunset may be the perfect end to a summer’s day. Light can take many forms, but when it is at its softest is when it makes us look the most beautiful.

Painters have known for centuries the benefits of a soft, natural light and how to achieve such without needing special equipment. While not appropriate for action shots perhaps, portraits benefit from the softest light we can give them. Photoshop hasn’t been around forever you know, but natural light at its softest works a magic that makeup and software could never achieve so accurately. Look at today’s photo, for example, and notice how soft the complexion is. Did we airbrush her skin in any way? No. First, her skin was quite healthy from the outset. But then, the gentleness of natural light diffused through lead glass at just the right time of day worked a magic that makes any thought of post-process manipulation preposterous.

Good photographers often struggle with finding just the right light for portraits. One needs shadows to help define features, so a light that is too bright or all-encompassing doesn’t work. Yet, too much shadow, or shadow from the wrong direction, can distort features, make a face look harsh and more angled than it naturally is. Light coming in at too high an angle can have the appearance of re-shaping features and is especially tough on noses or anyone with bags under their eyes. Good, soft light rarely just falls onto a photographer’s set. Even chasing that mythical “golden hour” is no promise of good light.[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]Soft light, such as in today’s image, is a diffused light. Light is diffused, or spread out, when it passes through some material that is at least partially opaque. In this case, it was an old window of lead glass. Despite how it appears, leaded glass has a graduated opacity in that over time the lead in the glass pulls the material toward the bottom of the frame, making it thicker at the bottom than at the top. When working with a window composed of sixteen smaller frames (four rows of four frames), the shifting lead lets more light in from the top of the frame than the bottom imprecisely so there is variation within each small frame. This effectively diffuses the light when the subject is at least two feet from the window.

Many different materials diffuse lights at different rates, giving one a lot of choices to get just the right light for just the right portrait. My personal preference is for white cotton, but that doesn’t work as well if the sunlight is not directly positioned at the material. I’ve also gotten wonderful results inside an old taupe canvas army tent, surprisingly enough, and almost always carry a commercial diffuser as part of my reflector kit. Of course, clouds are a natural diffuser and at times can be the perfect answer to a challenging portrait, but they also tend to reduce or eliminate shadows as well as muting color.  Other natural diffusers, such as tree leaves, might work depending on the type of leaf, but can also give a green tint to the warm light.

Ultimately, we want a soft light on our subject, though, because it makes them appear approachable, friendly, even kind. Portraits captured in softest light can have that same effect as moonlight did when Romeo saw Juliet, bringing out the natural beauty in a subject. A portrait has done its best when it causes one to feel that someone we don’t know, somehow, has become our best friend. Even Shakespeare couldn’t do better.[/one_half_last]

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