Portrait

 

La Bella Principessa by Leonardo da Vinci

My favorite painting by Leonardo da Vinci surfaced a few years ago and was sold at private auction. It is a picture of a girl, in profile, with beautiful wavy hair. It is believed to be the portrait of a fourteen-year old Italian noblewoman, Bianca Sforza, commissioned for her marriage. She was married and then died just a few months after the portrait was painted, probably from complications from pregnancy.

Such deaths were common then. They are not common now in the developed world, largely because of a network of women's healthcare that includes, but is not limited to, access to abortion for those who require it. 

Bianca Sforza had few human rights. Noblewomen's marriages were arranged. She was, in essence, sold, just as her portrait was sold centuries later. Her father, and then her husband, made the choices about her body that led to her fate.

Many more deaths like hers will now occur, and there is now no da Vinci to immortalize them.   

Ghost Yoga

I want to do a show on the Travel Channel called GHOST YOGA. It will be either:

1) People do yoga at haunted places to see if they can feel the ghostly energy.

2) People do yoga with ghosts.

3). Ghosts do yoga. (Because ghosts are invisible, this one would be a camera pointed at an empty location for an hour.)

March

 March comes in like a penguin and goes out like an irritable penguin. 

Small Sanction

 In support of Ukraine, I have ceased distribution of all my Amazon book titles in Russia.