August’s changing astrological season from Leo* to Virgo** calls up images of fearless lions, harvest goddesses and a combination of the two – the mythical sphinx. The sphinx was an ancient Egyptian invention with a lion’s body and male head – human or animal. They usually sported a headdress as worn by Pharaohs. Powerful symbols, the …
The scene in this contemporary nocturne photograph is the train station in the town of Náměšť nad Oslavou where Charles and his family lived in Czechoslovakia during World War II. Charles loved these night scenes as he also loved the “dreamy pensive mood” of nocturne paintings (and I do, too). On our frequent visits to …
One of Charles’s favorite painters, Frederic Edwin Church’s work was greatly influenced by one of his favorite scientists – Alexander von Humboldt, the Prussian naturalist. I’ve been reading a newly published graphic novel by Andrea Wulf, The Adventures of Alexander von Humboldt and her Humboldt biography The Invention of Nature and have discovered some interesting things Humboldt …
Answer: Being in a library in a castle! As a child during World War II, Charles was in awe of the small Southern Moravian town on the Oslava River where his family fled in the months leading up to the outbreak of the war. Náměšť nad Oslavou was full of historical treasures, art works and …
Happy Chinese New Year! “How many languages do you speak?” When I met Charles Novacek he spoke seven languages fluently and was working on number eight – Chinese. He said China was becoming a major economy and over a billion people spoke the language. Learning Mandarin would give him intellectual stimulation and would be advantageous …
Charles’ love of the High Tatra Mountains of Slovakia deepened when at the age of nine in 1937, he was sent there to a special sanitarium for children to recover from tuberculosis. “I was told that the mountain air cured me,” Charles said. There “I became acquainted with the territory where years later I would …
