The term, Egg of Columbus, perhaps began with Italian historian Girolamo Benzoni. In his document of the New World he wrote: Columbus was dining with many Spanish nobles when one of them said to him: ‘If your lordship had not discovered the Indies, there would have been, here in Spain, one who would have started a similar adventure with the same result.’

Columbus did not respond to these words but asked for a whole egg to be brought to him. He placed it on the table and said: ‘My lords, I will lay a wager with any of you that you are unable to make this egg stand on its end like I will do without any kind of help or aid.’ They all tried without success and when the egg returned to Columbus, he tapped it gently on the table breaking it slightly and, with this, the egg stood on its end.

All those present were confounded and understood what he meant: that once the feat has been done, anyone knows how to do it.

From Lifehacker.com

When the late grandma Seydee Sedit-Best was eulogized at the Boyardee funeral home, there were many who shed tears for this pioneer. She was a philologist and Biochemist educated at Oxford who was well known for translating many cookbooks into French. A life well lived, her crowning achievement was her recipe for mystic chicken soup.  She had been struggled for years, using precise and painstaking research, documenting her groundbreaking discovery in her first book, A Lil’ Bit Of This And A Lil’ Bit Of That, on the new york best seller list for three consecutive years.

She was born on December 31, 1899 and died January 22, 2001, living in three centuries and two millenniums and she never let anyone forget it, for she was like one of her soup ingredients, an old hen, as close to death as they come before being cut down and plucked after  a century.  She had built a reputation for being a healer,  as her false teeth glared, immersed in a glass of brown water on top of the coffin covered with the flag of France.

As I glanced at the teeth, recollections, long submerged, rose to the surface. My first memories of Sedyee now held the answer to a family mystery. I was distantly related to her and now sat in the second row to the left of the hand crafted box carved from a tree that grows only in the forest just north of Dijon, France.

Seydee was still alive and perky when I grew up. I remember her in the living room, declaring that the mystic receipe had transcendental properties. From my part, whether this was true, not or just a crock was always a point of contention. I never believed her because she never came off as the scientific type, but rather with the essence of a peasant immigrant who migrated from an obscure village of France and always seemed a bit odd resembling more a character in a Parisian fairy tale, so I never took very her seriously. Little did I know about who she really was until her papers were found buried in the backyard, dug up by our beloved family dog, Mustard, a canine that was bred in the famous Dog farms of Dijon and whose descendants were sent to the royal houses of Europe as companions first to Queen Victoria then her many children, married to most of the major houses of European royalty .

Then there were her medals we found in an old shoe box in her closet next to the numerous girdles she washed by hand and kept hidden behind the wood paneled door next to the portrait of  Empress Josephine. France had bestowed her the grand legion of honor with the grade of chevalier in 1956. Two years later Italy awarded her the Knight Grand Cross of the order of merit.  Also found was an ornate scroll written in calligraphy of her nomination for the Nobel prize in Biochemistry. The day her shoe box was discovered my family and I  sat on the table and looked at each other and said, “Who new.”

Grandma Seydee had always said that the event making it possible to find the answer to her recipe came from an ancient Tibetan text she discovered quite accidentally in the old Strands Book Store on Broadway and twelfth street just south of New York’s Union Square while doing her doctoral dissertation on Medicinal Elements Of Mushrooms And Herbs. Her theory was simple: there was a direct correlation between the mode of delivery of herbs and their potency in the body.

Her scientific approach was highly controversial, and she was dismissed by her contemporaries “as a tribal medicine woman who plucked mushrooms in to basket, one marked poisonous and the other,  edible but hallucinogenic.” Her theories however were never disproved, and by using Vitamin B-12 as a baseline comparison, she speculated about how her chicken soup would bring someone back from the brink of death. From her experimental techniques she came to several clues about various components of long life in her first major paper, Vitamin B-12 Levels , Sleep Deprivation and Dreams. In the paper she claimed  Its well known that taking vitamin B-12 was poorly absorbed in the gut to be of any value. Injecting it directly into the blood stream yielded much better results. Perhaps. her hypothesis followed,  smoking herbs or using them as ingredients in soup were far more effective. Unfortunately, she experimented on herself, which resulted in some mental confusion that raised many questions about her methods and effected her reputation within the scientific community. Some of her peers claimed she was too addicted to her own methods to be truly objective about her research or the conclusions she drew from the results.

During the early part of her life Grandma Seydee traveled across Asia, India and the Near East. Her father had been a traveling Buddhist monk who by happenstance met her mother one day at an outdoor Paris Flea Market where they eventually married. In an unpublished book, he said, “When I saw the way she carried the chickens by their neck, I instantly fell in love,”  and Seydee was born seven months later. Perhaps this was the first indication that chicken was her destiny and in her blood.

Her father was simply called He as his full name was unpronounceable in French  He was well known in many ancient monasteries across China, and He left her the only copy of his unpublished autobiography, Mystic Curiosities And Inventions with several clues underlined using invisible ink. One was a hand drawn map of the upper Siang valley in Tibet.

As a child, He took little Seydee to The Bronx Botanical Gardens, and among the numerous rose bushes that bloomed in early May, while teaching her to meditate, he first told her the story of his ancestor Miri, shaman of the Adi people. The medicine woman was long lived, but myth and legend still resonates within hundreds of tribes that exist to this day. Her name was also found etched on walls of many underground caves discovered in the Gobi desert of Mongolia that were long rumored to house the remnants of scrolls rescued by monks from the Alexandrian Library before it was burned.

When she was in Egypt studying meditation in one of the secret chambers of the great pyramids   she met Akmid Sedit who became her professor in the mystic arts and her first husband. Together, as man and wife they studied many degrees of Freemasonry and had a shared interest in Herbology experimenting with many mushrooms from a variety of cultures until his untimely death. After the mourning period, Seydee was determined to follow in Akmid’s footsteps which led her to the first two major ingredient of chicken soup: water and chicken; although she reasoned that water was in everything and therefore  a medium for soup rather than a true ingredient. However,  chicken was more specific and when she used different kinds cooking chickens, she realized in order to cure sick people, an old hen had to be used, “as close to death as they come.” This became her mantra that set her on the path of  her most important discovery: Grandma Seydee’s Mystic Chicken Soup.

Its clear there was more to grandma Seydee then the appearance an old bent woman who wore black orthopedic shoes and had purple tinted hair, always in the kitchen struggling with an old hen mumbling to herself incoherently.

When the Academy Of Motion Pictures Arts And Sciences honored Sophia Loren on May 4th, 2011 with a special night devoted to her life and career, it was the third recognition by the Academy of her talent and legend. It has been fifty years since her 1961 Oscar winning performance in Two Women and she continues to be an important figure in the golden age of both Hollywood and Italian Cinema.

As she approaches her seventy seventh birthday on September 20th, this was the perfect time to honor the actress once more, not with another statuette, none are necessary; her stature has gone beyond myth and legend. Sofia’s life has been nothing less then a fairy tale come true and celebrating it is not just about her beauty and talent, its also about the way she explains her views on life that elevates her to a philosopher. Her ideas are simple: live with passion, honesty, humility and a sense of humor.

Her first Oscar in 1961 was for Best Actress for a stunning performance in La Ciociara. The cinematic adaptation was directed by Victorio di Sica and based on the the book written by Alberto Moravia (1907 -1990). His novels explored social alienation, contemporary sexual values and existentialism. The production was filmed in Italian and subtitled in other languages. It centers on a woman in her early fifties who struggles to protect her daughter from the horrors of war. Sofia was twenty five at the time and lacked confidence she could portray a women twice her age, but di Sica  believed she could do it and convinced her to trust him and play Cesira, a middle aged woman with a teenage daughter.

Her experiences in Italy during World War ll and her relationship with di Sica who she described as a great teacher motivated her to try. “He gave me roles that were appropriate to my temperament  and brought things out I never knew I had. He would just look at me and I knew what he wanted.”

Her spellbinding portrayal in Two Women was hailed as one of best performances captured on film and established her as a dramatic actress with great authenticity. The brutality of war was never more clear then when both mother and daughter were raped by Mussolini’s soldiers. Its unfortunate that most copies of La Ciociara are so faded with a warped score, that the Academy would do well to restore the film and preserve it for future generations.

Her second Oscar was an honorary award bestowed to her by the Academy and presented by Gregory Peck in 1991 for being one of the treasures of world cinema. Not only were her Italian films  being honored but  her American pictures as well. Some of them featured many of Hollywood’s  most prominent leading men and directors.

Her philosophy shines not only in many of her roles, but also the interviews she has given over the years. They are incredibly witty and cover a wide range of subjects that reveal the simplicity of an old soul with much to teach.

In 1999 Sofia  was asked about aging. Her response was,  “ What can you do, time goes by for everyone, You are who you are,  and  you have to look the best you can , if you can, and then go on with life “

On love and  her relationship with Cary Grant, she said, “I was twenty two, and to see Cary Grant attracted to me the way he was, I fell a little bit for it, just a little, but it was worth it.”

When asked about her career, she responded, “ My career has been everything I was dreaming of and so much more, and probably much more then I deserved. i have no regrets about things I wished for but didn’t get, it would be a mortal sin, such a small thing, it would not be worth mentioning. My life has been like a fairy tale, really.”

The public has no misconceptions about Sofia because her candidness and  insights ring with clarity.  She has a rare gift  to convey her philosophy of life, reflecting what she has learned on her journey, both good and difficult. This is a legacy worth celebrating and a footnote in the life of one of the most fascinating women of the Twentieth Century.

Sophia Loren Quotes

In winter, on a stormy night as millions of snowflakes carried by the wind blanketed the landscape of sprinkled forms and muffled sounds, only the coughing of someone with a cold could be heard. The air was usually wet with a lingering spray of mucous mixed with bacteria dripping from a red swollen sinus when Grandma Seydee noticed the coughs, and a twitch in her right eye would appear. Then she began mumbling to herself incoherently, until she came to life as if animated with a purpose. She would holler, “wash your hands before and after you pick your nose,” as she examined every-one’s hands, turning to look at the palms to see if they were growing hair, as her false teeth glared over the refrigerator in a glass filled with yellow water.

Seydee was an old bent woman who wore black orthopedic shoes and had purple tinted hair, always in the kitchen struggling with an old hen arguing to herself, cut up and skinned then dumped in a cauldron filled with a blend of water, broth, vegetables and herbs to cure everyone suffering with the sniffles as her chicken soup was well known even in the old days, some would say, to have curative properties.

Born near Dijon, France, her mother was roman catholic and her father a traveling Buddhist Monk, who she met in Paris at an outdoor flea market. In the remaining fragments of his unpublished autobiography, Mystic Curiosities And Inventions, he described his meeting his future wife,  “It was the way she carried the chickens by their neck, it was in that moment, I fell in love.” Never the less, it was an arranged marriage, and Seydee was born seven months later.

Each member of the family had a handkerchief of their own, hand sewed with their initials in calligraphy, although the dried stains of green would make it difficult to see the letters as the cloth was often crumpled, pulled out of the back pocket to wipe a dripping nose. She would argue in a broken French, “tissues are a waste of time, you can’t blow too hard and they tear,” as her eyes were magnified by the purple framed eyeglasses that always seemed crooked but matched the color of the hairs under her chin, and those sticking out of her nose. When angry, she would curse in German, especially when struggling with a dull knife and a tough hen. Then it was time to stay away from the kitchen and read Superman comic books remembering to look at the floor as peeled carrot slivers, or chicken skin were often missed, probably the reason she wore orthopedic shoes.

Chicken soup varies from place to place, and the only two essential ingredients are water and chicken, but Seydee would say, “the secret of a making a good chicken soup is using a really old hen, as close to  death as they come.” But she would never explain why as her stories about growing up on a chicken farm in the old country were vivid and memorable. She was born Dec 31,1899 and her death on Jan 22, 2001 afforded her the rare claim of living in three centuries, and she never let anyone forget it as she added with a nervous shrill, “don’t forget two millenniums.” She was heir to the fortune from her fathers invention  known in Europe as the  Chicken Guillotine, sold only in countries outside of France because of its place in French history was always associated with the revolution, a painful memory in French culture.

Perhaps being old with all the experience that age has to offer, suggests wisdom can also be embedded in a chicken’s bones, sometimes provoking an insight, mystical or not,  that helps restore the natural balance of energy to the body and heal the soul. Some thought it was the asparagus stalk she added to the pot when no one was looking, but I often suspected it was the sweat of her brow dripping into the vat as she stirred the pot, mumbling to herself.

Grandma Seydee’s Mystic Chicken Soup

Ingredients

A really old hen, as close to death as they come, killed and plucked, then cut up.

One clove of garlic to keep away evil spirits and unwanted relatives

carrots

celery

onion or shallots

filtered water

Salt and pepper

Broth, vegetable or chicken

Some unidentified “things” that only Seydee knew remains unknown as family members given the recipe were sworn not to reveal the secret ingredients as she lay on her deathbed dying.

Sautee the onions in the soup pot till translucent with some extra virgin olive oil. Saydee would often say, “virgin is best otherwise you wont get the pure taste. Besides, she would explain, virgins were usually sacrificed to the gods to stop the volcano from awakening because they were so pure.” Then, fill the pot with distilled water, heat until boiling then throw the vegetables, cut up french style into the pot, then put  the old dead hen plucked and cut into pieces. Lower the flame and simmer until the meat slips off the bones. Only then is the soup ready. Serve with French Bread in a soup dish.

When asked how much is supposed to be put into the pot, she would respond, “The amount of servings depends on how much stuff you use to make the soup for as many people as you were planning to make it for,” as an odd glint appeared in her left eye.

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When Twilight, the four part novel written by Stephanie Meyer first appeared as a book in 2005, then in film in 2008, similarities between this story and other legends and myths were evoked. One tale that comes to mind is of the young maiden Persephone, kidnapped by Hades and brought to the underworld to be his consort and queen.

The legend has always had the appeal of an epic conflict that proliferates over her abduction. Demeter, her mother, goddess of fertility, is so overcome by emotion, she becomes vengeful, refusing to let anything live or grow. Begrudgingly, Hades agrees to let Persephone go but not before she tastes Pomegranate, the fruit that will forever bind her to the underworld forcing her to return for part of the year, delineating the four seasons.

Another tale describes a king with three beautiful daughters. The most attractive was the youngest, Psyche, who was so dazzling that people began to neglect the worship of Venus, goddess of love and beauty. Venus, a jealous god, asked her son Eros to make Psyche fall in love with an ugly creature. When he saw her beauty, Eros dropped the arrow meant for her and pricked himself instead, falling in love with her, marking the beginning of her long journey of trust, betrayal, sacrifice, redemption, transcendence and rebirth, told from her perspective.

In Twilight, Bella travels a similar path to Psyche as she describes in narrative her experience of herself as flawed, idolizing Edward but wondering why “a perfect god” would be so drawn to her. When he abandons her in New Moon, using a pretty flimsy excuse, she  articulates in vivid detail her feelings of isolation and the depths of profound depression. So severe is her pain that she flirts with danger and death to evoke Edwards presence even though she finds it difficult to utter his name, a common reaction when one is faced with unexpected rejection.  Finally, after finding redemption by offering to sacrifice her life to save Edward, traveling underground to face the gods of the undead, the Volturi,  she still experiences severe trials of strength and character as Bella and Edward marry and her transformation into an immortal begins when she discovers she is pregnant.

Bella’s unnaturally rapid pregnancy brings her close to death in the last novel, Breaking Dawn, and Edward is forced to change her after she gives birth to a beautiful, angelic and gifted child they name, Renesemee. A central theme of the last part of her journey, told in diary narrative, chronicles her rebirth as a vampire who is in total control of her blood lust, contrary to the behavior expected from “newbies,” suggesting that the Cullen’s, who carry the burden of being “damned,” are by their actions not. They have chosen out of free will not to feed on humans. This conscious choice and love made it possible for Edward, a vampire, to produce a child of beauty and warmth, and contrary to what is believed, redemption is possible even for vampires who exhibit compassion and prove by how they live their lives that they are not without souls.

Breaking Dawn will be filmed in two parts and is currently in production. The journey of Kristen Stewart, the actress who portrays Bella in all five films is how she will emote her narration in her performance in the last two films so that the audience can identify what it might feel like to be immortal. Rarely in literature is the opportunity presented to covey the evolution of both perspectives, before and after, from an autobiographical point of view.

Unrequited Love And The Twilight Saga

Recently, when President Obama was asked about the Top Kill Project, the plan to plug the oil spill in the gulf of Mexico, he declared, “If it’s successful, and there are no guarantees, it should greatly reduce or eliminate the flow of oil streaming into the Gulf from the sea floor, but if it’s not, there are other approaches that may be viable.” Never-the-less, this situation has focused attention on the necessity for seeking alternative fuel sources even though it will cause a great deal of pain from the costly changes in lifestyle required to kick the dependence on oil.

One way to resolve the global reliance on fossil fuels was suggested in a popular 1951 novel by British writer John Wyndhum who was relatively unknown until The Day Of The Triffids catapulted him from literary obscurity and established him as a major fiction writer. The public saw the book as a science fiction post apocalyptic satire about cultural dependence on the products of the industrial revolution while others contended it to be a play about how karma unfolds for those who did not open there eyes to see what was approaching.

The Triffids, a fictional creation of Wyndhum are described as large venomous plants genetically manipulated by industry controlled farms as a substitute for petroleum. “They can communicate through sound and have three feet which allows them mobility with poisonous tentacles that kill their prey and consume its flesh.”

The pivotal event that occurs is a dazzling display of lights in the sky from a passing comet that destroys the optic nerve and renders anyone who views them blind. Only a few on the planet are unaffected as the horrific consequences lead to the escape and proliferation of the triffids that seek humans as a source of food and display a remarkable ability for enhancing their intelligence with each successive generation by sharpening their predatory nature as ruthless hunters.

The first film adaption of the novel was in 1963 and starred Howard Keel, most known as the lead actor in a long string of MGM musicals of the 1950′s including Showboat and Kiss Me Kate, and who went on to television notoriety playing the second husband of Miss Ellie, matriarch of the Ewing clan on Dallas. This version was considered more of a horror movie that brought the triffid spores to Earth from the meteor shower much like the pods in The Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (1956). “Triffids are portrayed as aliens, and come from outer space, depicted as carnivorous monsters, evil in nature.” But few elements of the  original novel were in the script which had a happy ending when it was discovered that seawater turned the triffids into mush. The salvation of the human race presented in narrative form is similar to the microbes that miraculously ended The martian invasion in The War Of The Worlds (1953).

In December 2009 the BBC aired a made for TV miniseries which was never shown in the United States. This production  is  much more faithful to the 1951 book. It lays responsibility for the creation of the triffids on scientists and oil companies too quick to hail the discovery of triffid oil as the silver bullet to the crisis while doing nothing to change consumer consciousness except by transferring the dependence from fossil fuel to triffid oil, also regulated by the oil industry.

In this version as in the original novel, the plants did not come from outer space, nor are they monsters, but rather a species that comply  with the same biology that bacteria and virus’s have   evolved based on the scientific principle of adaptation. All this as a blind human race succumbs to the cattle call of their triffid predators reminiscent of the morlocks in H. G. Wells, The Time Machine.

The 2009 made for TV film stars two members of the Redgrave family, Jolie Richardson and her mother Vanessa Redgrave in a small but pivotal role as a mother superior who claims to hear the word of God and delivers blind people to the triffids as a human sacrifice to prevent the carnivores from overrunning the abbey she heads. Redgrave, considered by many as the foremost English speaking actress of the twentieth century is also well known for her controversial political and social activism which plays well in this role.

The breakdown of society, its moral foundations and the lines of good and evil are drawn differently in this intelligent production, with superb action and special effects, although the climax does not end as happily as it did for the 1961 film. The population of the planet is consumed and only a small community of sighted people survive on the Isle of White as reality deals a blow to those blinded by the consequences of corporate greed , cultural addiction and disregard for ecological balance.

Aside from water, tea is the most widely consumed beverage with a history steeped in rituals about the simple task of boiling water and dropping leaves into the pot.

According to myth, the emperor Shen Nung of China, who scholars say was well versed in science and the arts, ordered all of his subjects to boil water before drinking. Some historians believe this was based on a knowledge of medicine and the life cycle of germs. Others speculate that, “while the emperor was resting one day after traveling with an elaborate entourage, leaves from a nearby bush fell into the cauldron of boiling water being prepared for him. The monarch, noticing the flavourful aroma and dark color, ordered his food tasters to sample the drink. When the emperor finally sipped it himself, convinced that the tasters were not poisoned, he said ‘this is good.’”

It wasn’t until the Ch’a Ching was written in 800 A. D. by the renowned Lu Yu, an orphan raised by scholarly Buddhist monks in one of China’s finest monasteries. His training as an observer reflected a Zen Buddhist upbringing and led to the first comprehensive book written about tea and its evolution in culture. He recorded the various methods of it’s cultivation and preparation in ancient China that was eventually exported to imperial Japan by Zen missionaries, projecting Lu to near sainthood within his own lifetime.

Although this discovery was a step towards the development of herbal knowledge and the infancy of pharmaceuticals, Lu Yu still considered his life a failure and without meaning. Perhaps it was the realization that in all its glory, tea is nothing more then water with variable solvents open to interpretation when the liquid is poured from the cup and the clumps of leaves left behind reveal clues about the life cycle of whoever was drinking from the cup. This may have also been the origin of reading tea leaves, a form of divination.

Eel hunting is called eeling and is a popular sport practiced by eelers – people trained in catching eels and surviving the shock.

Although an electric eel can be mistaken for a snake, its more accurately classified as a fish, an aquatic vertebrate animal with scales that has a capacity to produce an electric field using specialized cells distributed throughout its body. The larger the eel, the greater the charge, serving as a major defense against predators and incapacitating prey up to 15 feet away.

Now, engineers from Yale University have designed a man made tool adapting the principles of the electric eel cell by not only replicating them but improving on their design. They claim that artificial versions of the eel’s electricity generating cells could be developed as a power source for medical implants and other tiny devices.

Other engineers of the new field of systems biology question if we really understand enough about how a cell produces electricity to do a better job of designing them than nature has.  In an experiment at the Kakamigahara institute, Japanese scientists wondered if it were possible to harness the eel’s power for economic use. They attached a conductive copper wire from a fish tank to a Christmas tree fully ornamented with lights. Every time the eel scraped against the wire, the tree lit up. Despite all this science, a more common place to find an eel is marinated and served on a sushi plate.