The search string this time -- a long one -- was, "wouldn't it be heavenly to know the constellations." It had to be that long, just to get to something that might be unique.
And, mirabile dictu, I got a hit.
See, that fragment comes from a song I now know was titled, "The Constellation Jig." I heard it a lot in about 4th grade, because my homeroom teacher of the time would let me listen to a set of LP phonographs, once I was done with my classwork. "Singing Science Records," they were called.
Like that page says, they "were very Atomic Age," at a time that meant something.
Doc Searls went and pointed to a very interesting page of photos of Plovidv, Bulgaria, taken by Stephen Lewis. Apparently the town is a time capsule of (among other styles) Jugendstil and Art Deco buildings.
This was not much of a surprise, as we just saw The Black Dahlia, and it seems one of the ways they got so many stunning Art Deco locations to film, standing in for LA in the 1940s, was to go to Bulgaria.
On the left there, you can see White House at Night (June 1890), by Vincent Willem van Gogh. Not one of his most famous paintings, but nice in its way.
While poking about the Wikipedia entry for Van Gogh, I learned something: the BBC reports they've been able to work out just about when Vincent had to have painted this picture. I mean, to within an hour or so. Because that's not the sun in the upper right -- it's Venus.
"Astronomers have pinpointed the day when Vincent van Gogh painted one of his canvases thanks to the position of the planet Venus in the tableau.
The White House at Night, which hangs in St Petersburg's Hermitage Museum, shows a house at twilight with a prominent star with a yellow halo in the sky.
Astronomers at Southwest Texas State University in San Marcos calculated that the star is Venus, which was bright in the evening sky in June 1890 when Van Gogh is believed to have painted the picture."
Mind you, reading the story from the Beeb, I think it entirely possible the whole quest started because the professors were stuck in Texas, and looking for a way to justify a "research" trip.
Still. Very cool, indeed.
