Louis_J_Sheehan

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Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

Vincent Willem van Gogh (30 March 1853 – 29 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist artist.[1] Some of his paintings are now among the world’s best known, most popular and expensive works of art.

Van Gogh spent his early adult life working for a firm of art dealers. After a brief spell as a teacher, he became a missionary worker in a very poor mining region. He did not embark upon a career as an artist until 1880. Initially, Van Gogh worked only with sombre colours, until he encountered Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism in Paris. He incorporated their brighter colours and style of painting into a uniquely recognizable style, which was fully developed during the time he spent at Arles, France. He produced more than 2,000 works, including around 900 paintings and 1,100 drawings and sketches, during the last ten years of his life. Most of his best-known works were produced in the final two years of his life, during which time he cut off part of his left ear following a breakdown in his friendship with Paul Gauguin. After this he suffered recurrent bouts of mental illness, which led to his suicide. http://myface.com/Louis_J_Sheehan

The central figure in Van Gogh’s life was his brother Theo, who continually and selflessly provided financial support. Their lifelong friendship is documented in numerous letters they exchanged from August 1872 onwards. Van Gogh is a pioneer of what came to be known as Expressionism. He had an enormous influence on 20th century art, especially on the Fauves and German Expressionists.

The Dutch pronunciation of Vincent van Gogh’s name is [ˈvɪnsɛnt vɑn ˈɣɔx] (help·info). It is also often pronounced as [ˈvɪnsənt væn ˈɡɒf] or [ˈvɪnsənt vɑn ˈɡɔx] in British English and [ˈvɪnsənt væn ˈɡoʊ] in US English.

Vincent van Gogh in 1866

Vincent Willem van Gogh was born on 30 March 1853 in Groot-Zundert, a village close to Breda in the province of North Brabant in the southern Netherlands.[2] Van Gogh was the son of Anna Cornelia Carbentus and Theodorus van Gogh, who was a minister of the Dutch Reformed Church. He was given the same name as his grandfather—and a first brother stillborn exactly one year before. It has been suggested[3] that being given the same name as his dead elder brother might have had a deep psychological impact on the young artist, and that elements of his art, such as the portrayal of pairs of male figures, can be traced back to this. The practice of reusing a name in this way was not uncommon. The name “Vincent” was often used in the Van Gogh family: the baby’s grandfather was called Vincent van Gogh (1789-1874); he had received his degree of theology at the University of Leiden in 1811. Grandfather Vincent had six sons, three of whom became art dealers, including another Vincent, referred to in Van Gogh’s letters as “Uncle Cent.” Grandfather Vincent had perhaps been named after his own father’s uncle, the successful sculptor Vincent van Gogh (1729-1802).[4] Art and religion were the two occupations to which the Van Gogh family gravitated.

Four years after Van Gogh was born, his brother Theodorus (Theo) was born on 1 May 1857. There was also another brother named Cor and three sisters, Elisabeth, Anna and Wil. As a child, Van Gogh was serious, silent and thoughtful. In 1860 he attended the Zundert village school, where the only teacher was Catholic and there were around 200 pupils. From 1861 he and his sister Anna were taught at home by a governess, until 1 October 1864, when he went away to the elementary boarding school of Jan Provily in Zevenbergen, the Netherlands, about 20 miles (32 km) away. He was distressed to leave his family home, and recalled this even in adulthood. On 15 September 1866, he went to the new middle school, Willem II College in Tilburg, the Netherlands. Constantijn C. Huysmans, who had achieved a certain success himself in Paris, taught Van Gogh to draw at the school and advocated a systematic approach to the subject. In March 1868 Van Gogh abruptly left school and returned home. His comment on his early years was: “My youth was gloomy and cold and sterile….”[5]

Art dealer and preacher (1869–1878)
Vincent van Gogh in 1872

In July 1869, at the age of fifteen, he obtained a position with the art dealer Goupil & Cie in The Hague through his Uncle Vincent (”Cent”), who had built up a good business which became a branch of the firm. After his training, Goupil transferred him to London in June 1873, where he lodged at 87 Hackford Road, Brixton[6] and worked at Messrs. Goupil & Co., 17 Southampton Street.[7] This was a happy time for Van Gogh: he was successful at work, and was already, at the age of 20, earning more than his father.[8] He fell in love with his landlady’s daughter, Eugénie Loyer,[9] but when he finally confessed his feeling to her, she rejected him, saying that she was already secretly engaged to a previous lodger. Vincent became increasingly isolated and fervent about religion. His father and uncle sent him to Paris, where he became resentful at how art was treated as a commodity, and he manifested this to the customers. On 1 April 1876, it was agreed that his employment should be terminated.

His religious emotion grew to the point where he felt he had found his true vocation in life, and he returned to England to do unpaid work, first as a supply teacher in a small boarding school overlooking the harbour in Ramsgate; he made some sketches of the view. The proprietor of the school relocated to Isleworth, Middlesex. Vincent decided to walk to the new location. This new position did not work out, and Vincent became a nearby Methodist minister’s assistant in wanting to “preach the gospel everywhere.”

At Christmas that year he returned home, and then worked in a bookshop in Dordrecht for six months, but he was not happy in this new position and spent most of his time in the back of the shop either doodling, or translating passages from the Bible into English, French and German.[10] His roommate from this time, a young teacher called Görlitz, later recalled that Vincent ate frugally, preferring to eat no meat.[11][12] In an effort to support his wish to become a pastor, his family sent him to Amsterdam in May 1877 where he lived with his uncle Jan van Gogh, a rear admiral in the navy.[13] Vincent prepared for university, studying for the theology entrance exam with his uncle Johannes Stricker, a respected theologian who published the first “Life of Jesus” available in the Netherlands. Vincent failed at his studies and had to abandon them. He left uncle Jan’s house in July 1878. He then studied, but failed, a three-month course at the Protestant missionary school (Vlaamsche Opleidingsschool) in Laeken, near Brussels.

Borinage and Brussels (1879–1880)
The house where Van Gogh stayed in Cuesmes in 1880; it was while living here that he decided to become an artist.

In January 1879 Van Gogh got a temporary post as a missionary in the village of Petit Wasmes[14] in the coal-mining district of Borinage in Belgium, bringing his father’s profession to people felt to be the most wretched and hopeless in Europe. Taking Christianity to what he saw as its logical conclusion, Vincent opted to live like those he preached to, sharing their hardships to the extent of sleeping on straw in a small hut at the back of the baker’s house where he was billeted;[15] the baker’s wife used to hear Vincent sobbing all night in the little hut.[16] His choice of squalid living conditions did not endear him to the appalled church authorities, who dismissed him for “undermining the dignity of the priesthood.” After this he walked to Brussels,[17] returned briefly to the Borinage, to the village of Cuesmes, but acquiesced to pressure from his parents to come “home” to Etten. He stayed there until around March the following year,[18] to the increasing concern and frustration of his parents. There was considerable conflict between Vincent and his father, and his father made enquiries about having his son committed to a lunatic asylum[19] at Geel.[20] Vincent fled back to Cuesmes where he lodged with a miner named Charles Decrucq,[21] with whom he stayed until October. He became increasingly interested in the everyday people and scenes around him, which he recorded in drawings.

In 1880, Vincent followed the suggestion of his brother Theo and took up art in earnest. In autumn 1880, he went to Brussels, intending to follow Theo’s recommendation to study with the prominent Dutch artist Willem Roelofs, who persuaded Van Gogh (despite his aversion to formal schools of art) to attend the Royal Academy of Art. There he not only studied anatomy, but the standard rules of modelling and perspective, all of which, he said, “you have to know just to be able to draw the least thing.” Vincent wished to become an artist while in God’s service as he stated, “to try to understand the real significance of what the great artists, the serious masters, tell us in their masterpieces, that leads to God; one man wrote or told it in a book; another in a picture.”[22]

Etten (1881)
Still-Life, arranged by Anton Mauve and executed by Van Gogh, December 1881

In April 1881, Van Gogh went to live in the countryside with his parents in Etten and continued drawing, using neighbours as subjects. Through the summer he spent much time walking and talking with his recently widowed cousin, Kee Vos-Stricker, the daughter of his mother’s older sister and Johannes Stricker, who had shown real warmth towards his nephew.[23] Kee was seven years older than Vincent, and had an eight-year-old son. Vincent proposed marriage, but she flatly refused with the words: “No, never, never” (niet, nooit, nimmer).[24] At the end of November he wrote a strong letter to Uncle Stricker,[25] and then, very soon after, hurried to Amsterdam where he talked with Stricker again on several occasions,[26] but Kee refused to see him at all. Her parents told him “Your persistence is disgusting”.[27] In desperation he held his left hand in the flame of a lamp, saying, “Let me see her for as long as I can keep my hand in the flame.”[27] He did not clearly recall what happened next, but assumed that his uncle blew out the flame. Her father, “Uncle Stricker”, as Vincent refers to him in letters to Theo, made it clear that there was no question of Vincent and Kee marrying, given Vincent’s inability to support himself financially.[28] What he saw as the hypocrisy of his uncle and former tutor affected Vincent deeply. At Christmas he quarreled violently with his father, even refusing a gift of money, and immediately left for The Hague.[29]

Drenthe and The Hague (1881–1883)

In January 1882 he settled in The Hague, where he called on his cousin-in-law, the painter Anton Mauve, who encouraged him towards painting. He soon fell out with Mauve, however, perhaps over the issue of drawing from plaster casts; Mauve appeared suddenly to go cold towards Vincent, not returning a couple of his letters. http://louis-j-sheehan-esquire.blog.friendster.com

Vincent guessed that Mauve had learned of his new domestic relationship with the alcoholic prostitute, Clasina Maria Hoornik (born February 1850, The Hague;[30] she was known as Sien) and her young daughter.[31] Van Gogh had met Sien towards the end of January.[32] Sien had a five year-old daughter, and was pregnant. She had already had two other children who had died, although Vincent was unaware of this.[33] On 2 July, Sien gave birth to a baby boy, Willem.[34] When Vincent’s father discovered the details of this relationship, considerable pressure was put on Vincent[35] to abandon Sien and her children. Vincent was at first defiant in the face of his family’s opposition.
Vincent van Gogh: View from his atelier in The Hague, watercolour

His uncle Cornelis, an art dealer, commissioned 20 ink drawings of the city from him; they were completed by the end of May.[36] In June Vincent spent three weeks in a hospital suffering gonorrhoea.[37] In the summer, he began to paint in oil. In autumn 1883, after a year with Sien, he abandoned her and the two children. Vincent had thought of moving the family away from the city, but in the end he made the break.[38] It is possible that lack of money had pushed Sien back to prostitution; the home had become a less happy one, and Vincent may have felt family life was irreconcilable with his artistic development. When Vincent left, Sien gave her daughter to her mother, and baby Willem to her brother, and moved to Delft and then Antwerp.[39] Willem remembered being taken to visit his mother in Rotterdam at around the age of 12, where his uncle tried to persuade Sien to marry in order to legitimize the child. Willem remembered his mother saying: “But I know who the father is. He was an artist I lived with nearly 20 years ago in The Hague. His name was Van Gogh.” She then turned to Willem and said “You are called after him.”[40] Willem believed himself to be Van Gogh’s son, but the timing of the birth makes this unlikely.[41] In 1904 Sien drowned herself in the river Scheldt.[39]

Van Gogh moved to the Dutch province of Drenthe in the north of the Netherlands, and in December, driven by loneliness, to stay with his parents who were by then living in Nuenen, North Brabant, also in the Netherlands.

Nuenen (1883–1885)
The Potato Eaters (1885)

In Nuenen, he devoted himself to drawing—paying boys to bring him birds’ nests—[42] and rapidly[43] sketching the weavers in their cottages. In autumn 1884, a neighbour’s daughter, Margot Begemann, ten years older than Vincent, accompanied him constantly on his painting forays and fell in love, which he reciprocated (though less enthusiastically). They agreed to marry, but were opposed by both families. Margot tried to kill herself with strychnine and Vincent rushed her to the hospital.[44]

On 26 March 1885, Van Gogh’s father died of a stroke. Van Gogh grieved deeply. For the first time there was interest from Paris in some of his work. In spring he painted what is now considered his first major work, The Potato Eaters (Dutch De Aardappeleters). In August his work was exhibited for the first time, in the windows of a paint dealer, Leurs, in The Hague. In September he was accused of making one of his young peasant sitters pregnant,[45] and the Catholic village priest forbade villagers from modelling for him.

During his time in Nuenen Van Gogh’s palette was of sombre earth tones, particularly dark brown, and he showed no sign of developing the vivid colouration that distinguishes his later, best known work. (When Vincent complained that Theo was not making enough effort to sell his paintings in Paris, Theo replied that they were too dark and not in line with the current style of bright Impressionist paintings.) During his two-year stay in Nuenen, he completed numerous drawings and watercolours, and nearly 200 oil paintings.

Antwerp (1885–1886)
Skull of a Skeleton with Burning Cigarette , oil on canvas, 1885.

In November 1885 he moved to Antwerp and rented a little room above a paint dealer’s shop in the Rue des Images (Lange Beeldekensstraat).[46] He had little money and ate poorly, preferring to spend what money his brother Theo sent to him on painting materials and models. Bread, coffee, and tobacco were his staple intake. In February 1886 he wrote to Theo saying that he could only remember eating six hot meals since May of the previous year. His teeth became loose and caused him much pain.[47] While in Antwerp he applied himself to the study of colour theory and spent time looking at work in museums, particularly the work of Peter Paul Rubens, gaining encouragement to broaden his palette to carmine, cobalt and emerald green. He also bought some Japanese Ukiyo-e woodcuts in the docklands, which he imitated and incorporated into the background of some of his paintings.[48] It was while he was living in Antwerp that Vincent began to drink absinthe heavily.[49] He was treated by Dr Cavenaile whose surgery was near the docklands,[50] possibly for syphilis;[51] the treatment of alum irrigations and sitz baths was jotted down by Vincent in one of his notebooks.[52]

In January 1886 he matriculated at the Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, studying painting and drawing. Despite disagreements over his rejection of academic teaching, he nevertheless took the higher-level admission exams. For most of February he was ill, run down by overwork, a poor diet and excessive smoking.
54, Rue Lepic, Paris

Paris (1886–1888)

In March 1886 he moved to Paris to study at Fernand Cormon’s studio, and in May 1886 his mother and sister Wil moved to Breda.[53] The brothers first shared Theo’s Rue Laval apartment on Montmartre. In June they took a larger flat at 54 Rue Lepic, further uphill. As there was no longer the need to communicate by letters, less is known about Van Gogh’s time in Paris than earlier or later periods of his life.

For some months Vincent worked at Cormon’s studio where he frequented the circle of the British-Australian artist John Peter Russell, and met fellow students like Émile Bernard and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, who used to meet at the paint store run by Julien “Père” Tanguy, which was at that time the only place to view works by Paul Cézanne.
Vincent van Gogh, pastel drawing by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, 1887.

http://louissheehan.bravejournal.com It was not difficult to see and study Impressionist works in Paris at this time. In 1886, for example, two large vanguard exhibitions were staged, the 8th and final exhibition of the Impressionists and an exhibition of the Artistes Indépendants. In these shows Neo-Impressionism made its first appearance; works of Georges Seurat and Paul Signac were the talk of the town. Though Theo, too, kept a stock of Impressionist paintings in his gallery on Boulevard Montmarte, by artists including Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley, Edgar Degas and Camille Pissarro, Vincent evidently had problems acknowledging these recent ways to see and paint. Conflicts arose, and at the turn of 1886 to 1887 Theo found shared life with Vincent “almost unbearable,” but in spring 1887 they made peace. Then Vincent set out for a campaign in Asnières, where he became personally acquainted with Paul Signac. Vincent and his friend Emile Bernard, who lived with parents in Asnières, adopted elements of the “pointillé” (pointillism) style, where many small dots are applied to the canvas, resulting in an optical blend of hues, when seen from a distance. The theory behind this also stresses the value of complementary colours[54] (for example, blue and orange), which form vibrant contrasts and enhance each other, when juxtaposed.[55]

In November 1887, Theo and Vincent met and befriended Paul Gauguin, who had just arrived in Paris.[56] Towards the end of the year, Vincent arranged an exhibition of paintings by himself, Bernard, Anquetin and (probably) Toulouse-Lautrec in the Restaurant du Chalet, on Montmartre. There, Bernard and Anquetin sold their first painting, and Vincent exchanged work with Gauguin, who soon departed to Pont-Aven. But the discussions on art, artists and their social situation started during this exhibition continued, and expanded to visitors of the show like Pissarro and his son, Signac and Seurat. Finally in February 1888, when Vincent felt worn out from life in Paris, he left the city, having painted over 200 paintings during his two years there. Only hours before his departure, accompanied by Theo, he paid his first and only visit to Seurat in his atelier.[57]
Still Life: Vase with Twelve Sunflowers, August 1888 (Neue Pinakothek, Munich)

Arles (February 1888 – May 1889)

Van Gogh arrived on 21 February 1888, at the railroad station in Arles, crossed Place Lamartine, entered the city through the Porte de la Cavalerie, and took quarters a few steps further, at the Hôtel-Restaurant Carrel, 30 Rue Cavalerie. He had ideas of founding a Utopian art colony. His companion for two months was the Danish artist, Christian Mourier-Petersen. In March, he painted local landscapes, using a gridded “perspective frame.” Three of his pictures were shown at the annual exhibition of the Société des Artistes Indépendants. In April he was visited by the American painter, Dodge MacKnight, who was resident in Fontvieille nearby.

On 1 May he signed a lease for 15 francs a month to rent the four rooms in the right hand side of the “Yellow House” (so called because its outside walls were yellow) at No. 2 Place Lamartine. The house was unfurnished and had been uninhabited for some time so he was not able to move in straight away. http://louis_j_sheehan_esquire.blogs.friendster.com/my_blog

He had been staying at the Hôtel Restaurant Carrel in the Rue de la Cavalerie, just inside the medieval gate to the city, with the old Roman Arena in view. The rate charged by the hotel was 5 francs a week, which Van Gogh regarded as excessive. He disputed the price, and took the case to the local arbitrator who awarded him a twelve franc reduction on his total bill.[58] On 7 May he moved out of the Hôtel Carrel, and moved into the Café de la Gare.[59] He became friends with the proprietors, Joseph and Marie Ginoux. Although the Yellow House had to be furnished before he could fully move in, Van Gogh was able to use it as a studio.[60] His major project at this time was a series of paintings intended to form the décoration for the Yellow House.
The Café Terrace on the Place du Forum, Arles, at Night, September 1888.

In June he visited Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. He gave drawing lessons to a Zouave second lieutenant, Paul-Eugène Milliet, who also became a companion. MacKnight introduced him to Eugène Boch, a Belgian painter, who stayed at times in Fontvieille (they exchanged visits in July). Gauguin agreed to join him in Arles. In August he painted sunflowers; Boch visited again. On 8 September, upon advice from his friend the station’s postal supervisor Joseph Roulin, he bought two beds,[61] and he finally spent the first night in the still sparsely furnished Yellow House on 17 September.[62];
The Red Vineyard (November 1888), Pushkin Museum, Moscow). Sold to Anna Boch, 1890.

On 23 October Gauguin eventually arrived in Arles, after repeated requests from Van Gogh. During November they painted together. Uncharacteristically, Van Gogh painted some pictures from memory, deferring to Gauguin’s ideas in this. Their first joint outdoor painting exercise was conducted at the picturesque Alyscamps.[63] It was in November that Van Gogh painted The Red Vineyard.

In December the two artists visited Montpellier and viewed works by Courbet and Delacroix in the Museé Fabre. However, their relationship was deteriorating badly. They quarrelled fiercely about art. Van Gogh felt an increasing fear that Gauguin was going to desert him, and what he described as a situation of “excessive tension” reached a crisis point on 23 December 1888, when Van Gogh stalked Gauguin with a razor and then cut off the lower part of his own left ear lobe, which he wrapped in newspaper and gave to a prostitute named Rachel in the local brothel, asking her to “keep this object carefully.”[64] Gauguin left Arles and never saw Van Gogh again. Van Gogh was hospitalised and in a critical state for a few days. He was immediately visited by Theo (whom Gauguin had notified), as well as Madame Ginoux and frequently by Roulin. He continued to ask for Gauguin, and told Theo that he “thought about him all the time”. In January 1889 Van Gogh returned to the “Yellow House”, but spent the following month between hospital and home, suffering from hallucinations and paranoia that he was being poisoned. In March the police closed his house, after a petition by thirty townspeople, who called him fou roux (”the redheaded madman”). Signac visited him in hospital and Van Gogh was allowed home in his company. In April he moved into rooms owned by Dr. Rey, after floods damaged paintings in his own home. On 17 April Theo married Johanna Bonger in Amsterdam.

Saint-Rémy (May 1889 – May 1890)
The Starry Night, June 1889 (The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

On 8 May 1889 Van Gogh, accompanied by a carer, the Reverend Salles, committed himself to the mental hospital of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole in a former monastery in Saint Rémy de Provence, a little less than 20 miles (32 km) from Arles. The monastery was a mile and a half out of the town and was in an area of cornfields, vineyards, and olive trees. The hospital was run by a former naval doctor, Dr. Théophile Peyron, who had no specialist qualifications. Theo van Gogh arranged for his brother to have two small rooms, one for use as a studio, although in reality they were simply adjoining cells with barred windows.[65] During his stay there, the clinic and its garden became his main subject. At this time some of his work was characterised by swirls, as in one of his best-known paintings, The Starry Night. He took some short supervised walks, which gave rise to images of cypresses and olive trees, but because of the shortage of subject matter due to his limited access to the outside world, he painted interpretations of Millet’s paintings, as well as his own earlier work. In September 1889 he painted two new versions of the Bedroom in Arles, and in February 1890 he painted four portraits of L’Arlésienne (Madame Ginoux), based directly on a charcoal sketch Gauguin had produced when Madame Ginoux had sat for both artists at the beginning of November 1888.[66]

In January 1890, his work was praised by Albert Aurier in the Mercure de France, and he was called a genius. In February, invited by Les XX, a society of avant-garde painters in Brussels, he participated in their annual exhibition. When, at the opening dinner, Henry de Groux, a member of Les XX, insulted Van Gogh’s works, Toulouse-Lautrec demanded satisfaction, and Signac declared, he would continue to fight for Van Gogh’s honour, if Lautrec should be surrendered. Later, when Van Gogh’s exhibit was on display with the Artistes Indépendants in Paris, Monet said that his work was the best in the show.[67]
Portrait of Dr. Gachet was sold for 82.5 million US dollars, current whereabouts unknown

Auvers-sur-Oise (May–July 1890)

In May 1890, Van Gogh left the clinic and went to the physician Dr. Paul Gachet, in Auvers-sur-Oise near Paris, where he was closer to his brother Theo. Dr. Gachet had been recommended to him by Pissarro, as he had previously treated several artists and was an amateur artist himself. Van Gogh’s first impression was that Gachet was “sicker than I am, I think, or shall we say just as much.”[68] Later Van Gogh did two portraits of Gachet in oils, as well as a third—his only etching, and in all three emphasis is on Gachet’s melancholic disposition. In his last weeks at Saint-Rémy Van Gogh’s thoughts had been returning to his “memories of the North”,[69] and several of the approximately 70 oils he painted during his 70 days in Auvers-sur-Oise—such as The Church at Auvers—are reminiscent of northern scenes.
Probably van Gogh’s final view of the outside world (looking through a window at the Auberge Ravoux)

Wheat Field with Crows—an example of the unusual double square canvas-size he used in the last weeks of his life—with its turbulent intensity is often, but mistakenly, thought to be Van Gogh’s last work (Jan Hulsker lists seven paintings after it[70]). Daubigny’s Garden is a more likely candidate. There are also seemingly unfinished paintings, such as Thatched Cottages by a Hill.
L’Auberge Ravoux, in Auvers-sur-Oise, where Vincent Van Gogh spent his final months and where he died. It is now a restaurant.

Van Gogh’s depression deepened, and on 27 July 1890, at the age of 37, he walked into the fields and shot himself in the chest with a revolver. Without realizing that he was fatally wounded he returned to the Ravoux Inn where he died in his bed two days later. Theo hastened to be at his side and reported his last words as “La tristesse durera toujours” (French for “the sadness will last forever”). Vincent was buried at the cemetery of Auvers-sur-Oise.[71] Theo had contracted syphilis—though this was not admitted by the family for many years—and not long after Vincent’s death, was himself admitted to hospital. He was not able to come to terms with the grief of his brother’s absence, and died six months later on 25 January at Utrecht. In 1914 Theo’s body was exhumed and re-buried beside Vincent.

Medical records
Vincent and Theo van Gogh’s graves at the cemetery of Auvers-sur-Oise.

Main article: Vincent van Gogh’s medical condition

Van Gogh cut off[72] the lobe of his left ear during some sort of seizure on 24 December 1888.[73] Mental problems afflicted him, particularly in the last few years of his life. During some of these periods he did not paint or was not allowed to. There has been much debate over the years as to the source of Van Gogh’s mental illness and its effect on his work. Over 150 psychiatrists have attempted to label his illness, and some 30 different diagnoses have been suggested.[74]

Diagnoses which have been put forward include schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, syphilis, poisoning from swallowed paints, temporal lobe epilepsy and acute intermittent porphyria. Any of these could have been the culprit and been aggravated by malnutrition, overwork, insomnia, and a fondness for alcohol, and absinthe in particular. http://www.friendster.com/louis4j4sheehan4esquire44

Still Life with Absinthe (1887)

Medical theories have even been proposed to explain Van Gogh’s use of the colour yellow. One theory holds that Van Gogh’s colour vision might have been affected by his love of absinthe, a liquor that contains a neurotoxin called thujone. High doses of thujone can cause xanthopsia: seeing objects in yellow. However, a 1991 study indicated that an absinthe drinker would become unconscious from the alcohol content long before consuming enough thujone to develop yellow vision. Another theory suggests that Dr. Gachet might have prescribed digitalis to Van Gogh as a treatment for epilepsy. There is no direct evidence that he ever took digitalis, but he did paint Gachet with some cut flower stalks of Common Foxglove, the plant from which the drug is derived. Those who take large doses of digitalis often report yellow-tinted vision or yellow spots surrounded by coronas (like those in the The Starry Night) and changes in overall colour perception.[75]

A recently proposed illness is lead poisoning. The paints he used were lead-based, and one of the symptoms of lead poisoning results in a swelling of the retina, which may have led to the halo effect seen in many of Van Gogh’s later works.[76] It has been suggested that Van Gogh suffered from the brain disorder hypergraphia. This is a manifestation of another disorder that appears as a near constant, overwhelming urge to write. The disorders it is most commonly associated with are mania and epilepsy.[77]

Work

Van Gogh drew and painted water-colours while he went to school, though very few of these works survive, and his authorship is challenged for many claimed to be from this period. When he committed himself to art as an adult (1880), he started at the elementary level by copying the “Cours de dessin”, edited by Charles Bargue and published by Goupil & Cie. Within his first two years he began to seek commissions, and in spring 1882, his uncle, Cornelis Marinus (owner of a renowned gallery of contemporary art in Amsterdam) asked him to provide drawings of the Hague; Van Gogh’s work did not prove up to his uncle’s expectations. Despite this, Uncle Cor (or “C.M. ” as he was referred to by his nephews) offered a second commission, specifying the subject matter in detail, but he was once again disappointed with the result.
This piece from the Hermitage Museum was painted six weeks before the artist’s death, at around eight o’clock on 16 June 1890, as astronomers determined by Venus’s position in the painting.[78]

Nevertheless, Van Gogh persevered with his work. He improved the lighting of his atelier (studio) by installing variable shutters, and experimented with a variety of drawing materials. For more than a year he worked hard on single figures—highly elaborated studies in “black and white”, which at the time gained him only criticism. Nowadays they are appreciated as his first masterpieces. In spring 1883, he embarked on multi-figure compositions, based on the drawings. He had some of them photographed, but when his brother commented that they lacked liveliness and freshness, Vincent destroyed them and turned to oil painting. Already in autumn 1882, Theo had enabled him to do his first paintings, but the amount Theo could supply was soon spent. Then, in spring 1883, Vincent turned to renowned Hague School artists like Weissenbruch and Blommers, and received technical support from them, as well as from painters like De Bock and Van der Weele, both Hague School artists of the second generation. When he moved to Nuenen, after the intermezzo in Drenthe, he started various large size paintings, but he destroyed most of them himself. The Potato Eaters and its companion pieces, The Old Tower on the Nuenen cemetery and The Cottage, are the only ones that have survived. After a visit to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, Vincent was aware that many faults of his paintings were due to a lack of technical experience. So he went to Antwerp, and later to Paris to improve his technical skill.

More or less acquainted with impressionist and neo-impressionist techniques and theories, Van Gogh went to Arles to develop these new possibilities. But within a short time, older ideas on art and work reappeared: ideas like doing series on related or contrasting subject matter, which would reflect the purpose of art. Already in 1884 in Nuenen he had worked on a series that was to decorate the dining room of a friend in Eindhoven. Similarly in Arles, in spring 1888 he arranged his Flowering Orchards into triptychs, began a series of figures which found its end in The Roulin Family, and finally, when Gauguin had consented to work and live in Arles side by side with Vincent, he started to work on the The Décoration for the Yellow House, probably the most ambitious effort he ever undertook. Most of his later work is elaborating or revising its fundamental settings.

The paintings from the Saint-Rémy period are often characterized by swirls and spirals. The patterns of luminosity in these images have been shown[79] to conform to Kolmogorov’s statistical model of turbulence. At various times in his life Van Gogh painted the view from his window; this culminated in the great series of paintings of the wheat field he could see from his adjoining cells in the asylum at Saint-Rémy.

Working procedures
Patch of Grass, (1887)

It is estimated that Van Gogh overpainted more than a third of his output with new paintings. In 2008, a team from Delft University of Technology and the University of Antwerp used advanced X-ray techniques to create a clear image of a woman’s face previously painted, underneath the work Patch of Grass.[80][81]

Legacy

Posthumous fame
Main article: Posthumous fame of Vincent van Gogh

Since his first exhibits in the late 1880s, Van Gogh’s fame grew steadily, among his colleagues and among art critics, dealers and collectors. After his death, memorial exhibitions were mounted in Brussels, Paris, The Hague and Antwerp. http://members.greenpeace.org/blog/purposeforporpoise

In the early 20th century, the exhibitions were followed by vast retrospectives in Paris (1901 and 1905), Amsterdam (1905), Cologne (1912), New York City (1913) and Berlin (1914). These prompted a noticeable impact over a new generation of artists.

Influence on art

The French Fauves, including Henri Matisse, extended both his use of colour and freedom in applying it, as did German Expressionists in the Die Brücke group. The 1950s’ Abstract Expressionism is seen as benefiting from the exploration Van Gogh started with gestural marks. In 1957, Anglo-Irish artist Francis Bacon based several paintings on reproductions of Van Gogh’s The Painter on his Way to Work (which had been destroyed during World War II).

Cultural depictions
Main article: Cultural depictions of Vincent van Gogh

He has been the subject or inspiration for a number of different works, including films, and classical and popular music, including Don McLean’s 1971 ballad “Vincent”, also known by its opening words, “Starry Starry Night”, which refer to the painting The Starry Night. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

Physical abuse at home does more than leave some children with broken bones, burns, and other injuries. Scientists now suspect that, over time, this parental cruelty tunes a school-age child’s perceptual system to pick up signs of anger in others’ facial expressions. http://myface.com/Louis_J_Sheehan

Physically abused kids adapt to their harsh reality by developing an emotional radar for glimmers of anger, theorizes psychologist Seth D. Pollak of the University of Wisconsin�Madison.

“Perceptual categories for specific emotions are flexible and subject to learning during childhood,” Pollak says. As an abused child’s brain incorporates this emphasis on detecting anger, he or she has increasing difficulty connecting with others in school and elsewhere, Pollack suggests.
http://louis-j-sheehan-esquire.blog.friendster.com

He and Wisconsin colleague Doris J. Kistler report their findings in the June 25 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Using posed facial expressions of happiness, sadness, fear, and anger, the researchers created digital images that gradually change from one emotion to another. For example, in one series of images, a face starts angry and ends up sad, displaying a shifting blend of the emotions in between.

Pollak and Kistler presented these images to 23 physically abused and 17 nonabused children, all around 9 years old. The children first examined pairs of faces with slightly different expressions and tried to identify which of the pair matched a third face. A given facial pair might include, say, one face that is 100 percent happy and one that’s 80 percent happy and 20 percent sad. The children then reported what they saw as the dominant emotion in each image.

Both abused and nonabused kids recognized pure expressions of each emotion.
http://louis-j-sheehan-esquire.blog.friendster.com The two groups also responded comparably to blends of happiness with sadness or fear.

However, abused children reacted far more strongly than the others did to signs of anger. They labeled faces as angry even when that emotion contributed only 40 percent to the expression. Nonabused children identified anger only when it contributed at least 70 percent. Moreover, abused kids had more difficulty than their nonabused peers did in telling apart expressions that predominantly consisted of anger.
http://louis-j-sheehan-esquire.blog.friendster.com

These findings highlight how children learn to cope with physical abuse, comments psychologist Megan R. Gunnar of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis�St. Paul. “Physically abused kids become experts at perceiving anger with a minimal amount of information,” she says.

A parallel process may apply to children of depressed parents, adds psychologist Nathan A. Fox of the University of Maryland at College Park. These kids could become sensitized to elements of sadness in facial expressions. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire .

Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire. In South America’s ancient Nasca culture, some local folk literally lost their heads so that everyone else might fill their bellies. The Nasca obtained trophy heads, human skulls modified in various ways and intended to spur successful farming, from their own people, not from foreigners slain in battles and raids as was practiced by the Inca and other prehistoric societies of that region, a new study finds. http://sheehan.myblogsite.com

Earlier analyses of paintings on Nasca pottery had suggested that members of this culture believed that the taking of trophy heads provided supernatural power needed for crop growth. Since the first Nasca trophy heads were discovered nearly 100 years ago, scientists have debated whether these items came from vanquished enemies or from local individuals thought to represent venerated Nasca ancestors.

“Rather than obtaining heads from enemy warriors through geographic expansion or warfare as seen in other parts of the world, we argue that Nasca trophy heads derived from the local Nasca population,” says archaeologist and study director Kelly Knudson of Arizona State University in Tempe. http://sheehan.myblogsite.com

The finding comes from an analysis of the diet-related substances that had collected and remain in the teeth of unearthed Nasca trophy heads. Comparing these substances with those in the teeth of skeletons known to be from Nasca individuals shows that one set of trophy heads came from the Nasca themselves rather than from outsiders, Knudson’s team reports in a paper published online December 11 in the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology.

Such data can’t yet pinpoint the geographic origins of the people whose heads became Nasca trophy heads, nor can the data rule out the possibility that the trophy heads were acquired in fights between local Nasca groups, remarks anthropologist William Isbell of Binghamton University in New York. “We can’t draw any final conclusions from this new study, but the results make it more likely that these severed heads were ancestors and not enemies,” Isbell says.
access
Enlargemagnify
MEMORY IN POTTERYA Nasca ceramic vessel bears paintings of a war scene and of disembodied heads that will be prepared as trophy headsPHOTO CREDIT: copyright The Field Museum 1694.171355/John Weinstein

Nasca culture existed in the coastal lowlands of what is now southern Peru from about 2,000 to 1,250 years ago. The society included a large ceremonial city that hosted pilgrimages, feasts and other ritual events. Political complexity and warfare increased during the culture’s final 200 years.

Much archaeological evidence suggests that local Nasca groups sometimes engaged in battles and raids among themselves, in line with Knudson’s finding of local origins for trophy heads, comments archaeologist Kevin Vaughn of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind. http://sheehan.myblogsite.com As the Nasca culture neared its end, various groups built well-protected, widely spaced settlements, probably in response to internal conflicts, notes anthropologist Katharina Schreiber of the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Nasca sites of various ages have yielded more than 150 trophy heads, often found in caches of as many as 48 skulls, in graves as offerings to the dead and in public buildings. Most trophy skulls come from men, but some are from women and teenagers.

Knudson and her colleagues studied 16 trophy heads found at six Nasca sites by the late anthropologist Alfred Kroeber in 1925 and 1926. All the heads had been modified in the same way, with a hole drilled in the forehead for a carrying cord. Many Nasca trophy heads contain comparable forehead holes. Kroeber’s finds are kept at The Field Museum in Chicago. http://sheehan.myblogsite.com

Biochemical profiles of tiny amounts of tooth enamel taken from these trophy heads were compared to corresponding data for 13 intact Nasca skeletons that had already been excavated from either of three Nasca cemeteries. The scientists measured levels of key forms of strontium, oxygen and carbon in the ancient teeth, which were compared to baseline levels of these substances in rock formations, water, plants and small animals throughout the Nasca region.

Signature ratios of different forms of strontium, oxygen and carbon reflect where a person lived and what types of foods he or she consumed.

Overall, teeth from the trophy heads and from the comparison group displayed no substantial differences in the ratios of these substances. It’s thus likely that individuals from both groups lived in the Nasca region, Knudson says.

In support of that view, an unpublished investigation by study coauthor Kathleen Forgey of Indiana University Northwest in Gary indicates that mitochondrial DNA sequences extracted from the Kroeber trophy heads closely resemble corresponding genetic sequences from intact Nasca skeletons. http://sheehan.myblogsite.com

Paintings on pottery from late Nasca periods show warriors holding or wearing trophy heads. “It is possible that warfare was a more common part of trophy taking toward the end of the Nasca culture,” Knudson says. Further biochemical studies of trophy heads can address that issue, in her view. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

Bonuses for losing money
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
BY JAN MURPHY
Of The Patriot-News

In a year when the school employees’ pension system lost $1.8 billion, the system’s investment staff still received more than $854,000 in bonus payments.

Twenty-one members of the Public School Employees’ Retirement System’s investment staff received bonuses for their work in the 2007-08 fiscal year, which ended June 30. The bonuses range from $9,720 to $106,223.

The average bonus is $40,672. The system’s investment staff earn base salaries between $63,179 and $251,542.

But the bonus program is coming to an end.

The system’s board voted Friday to end the program at the end of this month.

Market conditions and other pressures led to the board’s decision to rescind the practice, said Jeffrey Clay, the system’s executive director.

“There was some concern given the unprecedented markets at this point, plus … across this country, there are issues raised with respect to incentive compensation for investment professionals in this market,” Clay said.

Gov. Ed Rendell was among those objecting to the bonuses. He sent a letter in November to system officials advising against awarding them this year. http://louis2j2sheehan2esquire2.wordpress.com

“Given the fund’s recent performance and the serious financial challenges now facing the commonwealth as a whole, the payment of large bonuses to PSERS employees would be inappropriate and indefensible,” Rendell wrote.

System officials, however, said lawyers advised they had a contractual obligation to pay the incentive payment, since they were provided for in board policy.

Investment staff will still be eligible to receive bonuses for work done between July 1 and Dec. 31, Clay said. He said all incentives are based on objective criteria that are independently verified.

In the first quarter of the 2008-09 fiscal year, which ended September 30, the school employee pensions system’s investments lost 11 percent.

Going forward, Clay said the board might consider raising the investment staff’s base salaries to keep their compensation competitive, or it might hire an outside consultant to offer some ideas.

The bonuses are intended to supplement base salaries that a market study shows are lower than the going rate for professional investors to entice them to earn the best returns possible for the fund, system officials said.

While the investment staff’s work in the last fiscal year did result in a 2.8 percent loss on investments, system officials pointed out their in-house investors outperformed their peers nationally. Their peers’ median return was a negative 4.56 percent for the same period.

Steve Nickol, vice chairman of the system’s board, said he understands that the payments are huge to people who already receive among the fattest salaries in state government. But he added that “they’re some of the few people in state government who make money, generally.”

Investment staff at the other state pension system, the State Employees’ Retirement System, are also eligible for bonuses if they hit at least an 8.5 percent rate of return. Considering the losses that the fund experienced this year, system spokesman Robert Gentzel said, “I can say with a high degree of certainty that they will not be getting incentive payments for 2008.”

For 2007, nine out of its 16 investors received a total of $193,803 in bonuses for helping the fund gain 17.2 percent in value, Gentzel said. Those bonuses ranged from $9,337 to $55,947. The average was $21,534. (The state workers’ retirement system operates on a calendar year).

Sen. John Eichelberger, R-Blair County, welcomed the news about the school employees’ pension board decision to end the bonus program. He said he plans to reintroduce legislation to ban bonuses to most state government employees when the new legislative session starts in January.

His proposal allows for an exception for bonuses that are based on objective criteria like the ones that the pension systems offered.

But he said, “it still was awkward because we were making an exception for somebody. If it’s a good rule, it should rule across the board.”

Using internal staff to manage about 30 percent of the school employees’ pension fund’s nearly $55 billion in assets and operate the system’s in-house trading room saves about $12 million annually, system officials said.

That saving alone is a solid reason to reward investment staff incentives for good performance, said Keith Brainard, research director for the National Association of State Retirement Administrators. He noted that Pennsylvania was among a minority of states that offered incentive payments to investment staff. http://louis2j2sheehan2esquire2.wordpress.com

He said, “I think the fact that more don’t do it has more to do with the politics of the issue rather than the merits of it.”

Staff writer Charles Thompson contributed to this report. JAN MURPHY: 232-0668 or jmurphy@patriot-news.com

©2008 Patriot-News
© 2008 PennLive.com All Rights Reserved.
Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire . Almost three weeks before the shooting war between Russia and Georgia began last August, online attackers started assaulting Georgia’s Web sites. Months after the cease-fire, the attackers’ identities remain a mystery. What is known suggests widespread vulnerability to such elusive attackers.

In July the foreign ministry’s Web site was defaced with a slide show comparing Georgia’s president to Hitler. http://34819louis0j0sheehan0esquire.wordpress.com In August hundreds of thousands of computers were taken over and linked into “botnets” that overloaded Georgian servers with junk traffic, hampering the nation’s efforts to communicate.

Georgian officials blamed the Russian government, but online attacks are notoriously hard to pinpoint. Hackers take circuitous paths to their targets, masking their origins.

Then the Russian Business Network, a shadowy Moscow cyber- criminal group, came under suspicion in media reports. The group disbanded more than a year ago, but cyber-security watchdogs claim that many of the same people, under a different name, were involved in these attacks. Finally, a journalist reporting in Slate discovered for himself how easy it was to wreak cyber-havoc. Simple, downloadable scripts allowed anyone to join the online pile-on. http://34819louis0j0sheehan0esquire.wordpress.com

Bill Woodcock, research director with the Internet infrastructure group Packet Clearing House, is cautious about assigning blame. “You’ll never be able to establish who was sitting in front of a computer from which an attack originates,” he says.

The Holy Bible: King James Version. 2000.
The Psalms
91

Abiding in the Shadow of the Almighty
1 He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High

shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.
2 I will say of the LORD,

He is my refuge and my fortress:
my God; in him will I trust.
3 Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler,

and from the noisome pestilence.
4 He shall cover thee with his feathers,

and under his wings shalt thou trust:
his truth shall be thy shield and buckler.
5 Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night;

nor for the arrow that flieth by day;
6 nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness;

nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday.
7 A thousand shall fall at thy side,

and ten thousand at thy right hand;
but it shall not come nigh thee.
8 Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold

and see the reward of the wicked.
9 Because thou hast made the LORD, which is my refuge,

even the Most High, thy habitation;
10 there shall no evil befall thee,

neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.
11 For he shall give his angels charge over thee, Mt. 4.6 · Lk. 4.10

to keep thee in all thy ways.
12 They shall bear thee up in their hands,

lest thou dash thy foot against a stone. Mt. 4.6 · Lk. 4.11
13 Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder:

the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet. Lk. 10.19
14 Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him:

I will set him on high, because he hath known my name.
15 He shall call upon me, and I will answer him:

I will be with him in trouble;
I will deliver him, and honor him.
16 With long life will I satisfy him,

and show him my salvation.
Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

December 2, 2008
Arrogant, Abusive and Disruptive — and a Doctor
By LAURIE TARKAN

It was the middle of the night, and Laura Silverthorn, a nurse at a hospital in Washington, knew her patient was in danger. http://louis2j2sheehan2esquire2.wordpress.com
The boy had a shunt in his brain to drain fluid, but he was vomiting and had an extreme headache, two signs that the shunt was blocked and fluid was building up. When she paged the on-call resident, who was asleep in the hospital, he told her not to worry.

After a second page, Ms. Silverthorn said, “he became arrogant and said, ‘You don’t know what to look for — you’re not a doctor.’ ”

He ignored her third page, and after another harrowing hour she called the attending physician at home. The child was rushed into surgery.

“He could have died or had serious brain injury,” Ms. Silverthorn said, “but I was treated like a pest for calling in the middle of the night.”

Her experience is borne out by surveys of hospital staff members, who blame badly behaved doctors for low morale, stress and high turnover. (Ms. Silverthorn said she had been brought to tears so many times that she was trying to start her own business and leave nursing.)

Recent studies suggest that such behavior contributes to medical mistakes, preventable complications and even death.

“It is the health care equivalent of road rage,” said Dr. Peter B. Angood, chief patient safety officer at the Joint Commission, the nation’s leading independent hospital accreditation agency.

A survey of health care workers at 102 nonprofit hospitals from 2004 to 2007 found that 67 percent of respondents said they thought there was a link between disruptive behavior and medical mistakes, and 18 percent said they knew of a mistake that occurred because of an obnoxious doctor. (The author was Dr. Alan Rosenstein, medical director for the West Coast region of VHA Inc., an alliance of nonprofit hospitals.) http://louis2j2sheehan2esquire2.wordpress.com

Another survey by the Institute for Safe Medication Practices, a nonprofit organization, found that 40 percent of hospital staff members reported having been so intimidated by a doctor that they did not share their concerns about orders for medication that appeared to be incorrect. As a result, 7 percent said they contributed to a medication error.

There are signs, however, that such abusive behavior is less likely to be tolerated. Physicians and nurses say they have seen less of it in the past 5 or 10 years, though it is still a major problem, and the Joint Commission is requiring hospitals to have a written code of conduct and a process for enforcing it.

Still, every nurse has a story about obnoxious doctors. A few say they have ducked scalpels thrown across the operating room by angry surgeons. More frequently, though, they are belittled, insulted or yelled at — often in front of patients and other staff members — and made to feel like the bottom of the food chain. A third of the nurses in Dr. Rosenstein’s study were aware of a nurse who had left a hospital because of a disruptive physician.

“The job is tough enough without having to prepare yourself psychologically for a call that you know could very well become abusive,” said Diana J. Mason, editor in chief of The American Journal of Nursing.

Laura Sweet, deputy chief of enforcement at the Medical Board of California, described the case of a resident at a University of California hospital who noticed a problem with a fetal monitoring strip on a woman in labor, but didn’t call anyone. http://louis2j2sheehan2esquire2.wordpress.com

“He was afraid to contact the attending physician, who was notorious for yelling and ridiculing the residents,” Ms. Sweet said. The baby died.

Of course, most doctors do not spew insults or intimidate nurses. “Most people are trying to do the best job they can under a high-pressure situation,” said Dr. Joseph M. Heyman, chairman of the trustees of the American Medical Association.

Dr. William A. Norcross, director of a program at the University of California, San Diego, that offers anger management for physicians, agreed. But he added, “About 3 to 4 percent of doctors are disruptive, but that’s a big number, and they really gum up the works.” Experts say the leading offenders are specialists in high-pressure fields like neurosurgery, orthopedics and cardiology.

In one instance witnessed by Dr. Angood of the Joint Commission, a nurse called a surgeon to come and verify his next surgical patient and to mark the spot where the operation would be done. The harried surgeon yelled at the nurse to get the patient ready herself. When he showed up late to the operating room, he did not realize the surgery site was mismarked and operated on the wrong part.

“The surgeon then berated the entire team for their error and continued to denigrate them to others, when the error was the surgeon’s because he failed to cooperate in the process,” Dr. Angood said.

A hostile environment erodes cooperation and a sense of commitment to high-quality care, Dr. Angood said, and that increases the risk of medical errors.

“When the wrong surgery is done on patients,” he said, “often there is somebody in that operating room who knew the event was going to occur who did not feel empowered enough to speak up about it.”

Dr. Norcross blamed “the brutal training surgeons get, the long hours, being belittled and ‘pimped’ ” — a term for being bombarded with questions to the point of looking stupid. “That whole structure teaches a disruptive behavior,” he said.

Dr. Norcross and other experts said staff members’ understandable reluctance to challenge a physician, especially a popular surgeon who attracts patients to the hospital, created an atmosphere of tolerance for the bad behavior and indifference. So did a tendency among doctors to form “old boy” networks and protect one another from criticism.

But things have begun to change. Today, good communication and leadership are two of the six core skills taught in medical schools and residency programs. More nurses are challenging doctors on their inappropriate behavior, and fewer hospitals are tolerating disruptive doctors. “Today they’re getting rid of that doctor or sending them to anger management,” said Dr. Thomas R. Russell, executive director of the American College of Surgeons.

Hospitals have also developed more formal and consistent ways of addressing disruptive behavior, Dr. Rosenstein said. They are also trying to improve relations and mutual respect between doctors and nurses.

At John Muir Health, a nonprofit group of two hospitals in Walnut Creek and Concord, Calif., a committee of physicians, nurses and other staff members was formed to focus on collaboration and communication between disciplines.

“When complaints are submitted, we try to be proactive early to let them know there is not going to be any tolerance for that,” said Dr. Roy Kaplan, John Muir’s medical director for quality.

Some physicians worry that hospital administrators will abuse the stricter codes of conduct by using them to get rid of doctors who speak out against hospital policies. And the Joint Commission rulings have spawned a cottage industry of anger management centers and law firms defending hospitals or physicians.

Professionals like Ms. Silverthorn, the nurse in Washington, said the change was overdue.

“We go to school, we have a very important job, but there’s no respect,” she said. http://louis2j2sheehan2esquire2.wordpress.com

She recalled a particularly humiliating moment on Dec. 25, 2006. Working in the pediatric emergency room, she called a drug by its generic name rather than its brand name.

“I was quickly shouted out of the trauma room and humiliated in front of everyone,” she said. But while “everyone knew the doctor was actually the one who didn’t know what he was doing,” she continued, no one said a word.

In a decision that surprised the industry and even the management of her own company, the chairwoman and chief executive of Playboy Enterprises, Christie Hefner, announced Monday that she was resigning from the company her father, Hugh Hefner, had founded.

Ms. Hefner, 56, a highly regarded executive who has worked for Playboy since 1975, said she would not look for another full-time corporate job after she leaves the company in January, but would seek nonprofit work and board positions among other interests.

“I’ve always known that I wanted to move on at some point in my career,” Ms. Hefner said in an interview. “I’ve given a great deal of my life to the company.”

The company’s strategy is not likely to change drastically; Mr. Hefner, 82, is still the controlling shareholder. http://Louis-j-sheehan.com

No replacement has been named for Ms. Hefner, and the announcement was so unexpected that the board has not even named an executive search firm to find her successor. Jerome H. Kern, a board member, will become interim chairman.

Ms. Hefner leaves Playboy at a difficult time for the company and the media industry. In the third quarter, Playboy posted a net loss of $5.2 million, versus a profit of $2.6 million a year earlier. Without a one-time overhaul charge, the quarter would have produced a profit of $1.1 million.

The magazine is facing rising printing, paper and distribution costs, and ad pages through the September issue were down 15.5 percent from a year earlier, according to Publishers Information Bureau.

The availability of free pornography online makes it difficult for Playboy’s video channels, which charge for pornographic content, to compete.

Ms. Hefner said she thought the business was on solid ground despite its current challenges. “If my strategy had been never to leave until there are no challenges and no opportunities, I would never have been able to leave,” she said.

Ms. Hefner, who became chief executive in 1988, shut down the original Playboy Clubs, a chain of nightclubs featuring waitresses dressed in Playboy bunny costumes; helped begin Playboy TV and Playboy.com; and directed the successful expansion to licensing the Playboy brand during her tenure.

“Christie is well-respected, is always very articulate in her vision, and I think has had a really tough job for the past couple of years in a business with real secular challenges,” said David Bank, an analyst with RBC Capital Markets.

Mr. Hefner’s attachment to the company, analysts said, has partly shackled its progress. Several have suggested that Playboy license the magazine to another publisher, an idea the company has deflected because of Mr. Hefner’s enthusiasm for Playboy magazine, said David Miller, an analyst at Caris & Company. He added that “Playboy will never sell that magazine, at least while Mr. Hefner is alive.”

Ms. Hefner said her father was supportive of her move, and she did not expect that a nonfamily successor would bring major change. http://Louis-J-Sheehan.biz

“I actually succeeded as president someone who’d been brought in from outside the company,” she said. “There should always be an openness to professional management.”

“Hef is going to provide ample family continuity, if you will,” she said.

Playboy shares closed up more than 21 percent in Monday trading, to $2.13 a share.

In two Turkish villages, nearly half of all deaths since 1980 have resulted from a form of cancer caused by inhaling erionite, a brittle and fibrous volcanic mineral found in construction materials used in the villages.

Millions of rural residents in central Turkey have probably been exposed to hazardous amounts of the mineral, say Y. Izzettin Baris of Güven Hospital in Ankara, Turkey, and Philippe Grandjean of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston.

Erionite exposure can cause mesothelioma (SN: 9/3/83, p. 155), a rare cancer that develops in the membranes that line the chest and abdomen. Exposure to airborne asbestos can also cause the disease.

Baris and Grandjean studied 661 adults who, in 1979 or 1980, lived in one of two villages where erionite-rich rock is abundant and had been widely used in home construction. Another 230 adults in the study lived in a third village where erionite is rare. http://louisgjgsheehan.blogspot.com

Through 2003, 117 people in the erionite-exposed villages had died of mesothelioma, making that cancer responsible for 45 percent of all deaths there during the study, the researchers report in the March 15 Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Just two villagers had died of mesothelioma in the unexposed village, and both of those people had been born elsewhere. http://louisgjgsheehan.blogspot.com

As evidence of erionite’s dangers has emerged in recent decades, residents in the affected villages have abandoned contaminated structures. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

Amon Leopold Göth (11 December, 1908 – September 13, 1946) was a Hauptsturmführer of the SS and was the commandant of the Nazi concentration camp at Płaszów, General Government (German occupied area of Poland).

Göth was born in Vienna, then the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, to a family in the printing industry. At the age of 22, Göth became a member of the Austrian branch of the Nazi Party. In 1930 he was assigned the Party Number 510764. Göth simultaneously joined the Austrian SS and was appointed an SS-Mann with the SS Number 43673.

Göth’s early SS activities are little known, largely because the Austrian SS was an illegal and underground organization until the Anschluss of Austria by Nazi Germany in 1938. Between 1932 and 1936, Göth was a member of an Allgemeine-SS company in Vienna and, by 1937, had risen to the rank of SS-Oberscharführer. Between 1938 and 1941, he was a member of SS-Standarte (Regiment) 11 operating from Vienna and was commissioned an SS-Untersturmführer on July 14, 1941.

In August 1942, Göth left Vienna to join the staff of the SS and Police Leader of Kraków. He was appointed as a regular SS officer of the Concentration Camp service, and on February 11, 1943 was assigned to construct and command a forced labour camp at Płaszów. The camp took one month to construct using slave labour and, on March 13, 1943, the Jewish ghetto of Kraków was closed down with the surviving inhabitants imprisoned in the new labor camp. Approximately 2,000 people died during the evacuation, many of whom Göth personally executed. http://louis0j0sheehan.blogspot.com

On September 3, 1943, Göth was further tasked to close down the ghetto at Tarnów, where an unknown number of people were killed on the spot. On February 3, 1944, Göth shut down the concentration camp at Szebnie by ordering the inmates to be murdered on the spot or deported to other camps, again killing several thousand people.

On April 20, 1944, Göth was promoted to the rank of SS-Hauptsturmführer, having received a double promotion and thus skipping the rank of SS-Obersturmführer. He was also appointed a regular officer of the Waffen-SS. His assignment as Commandant of the Płaszów Labor Camp continued, now under the direct authority of the SS Economics and Administration Office.

It was Göth’s firm belief that the Jews themselves should pay for their own execution, and it was wholly in this spirit when on May 11, 1942, in the small town of Szczebrzeszyn, the Gestapo ordered the Jewish council to pay 2,000 zloty and 3 kilos of coffee to cover the expenses for the ammunition used to kill the Jews.[1]

In Płaszów, Göth tortured and murdered prisoners on a daily basis. During his time at Płaszów, Göth allegedly shot over 500 Jews himself; Poldek Pfefferberg, one of the Schindler Jews, famously said, “When you saw Göth, you saw death.” Göth spared the life of a Jewish prisoner Natalia Hubler, later famous as Natalia Karp, after hearing her play a Nocturne by Chopin on the piano the day after she arrived at the Płaszów camp.

On September 13, 1944, Göth was relieved of his position as Commandant of Płaszów and was assigned to the SS Office of Economics and Administration. Shortly thereafter, in November 1944, Göth was charged with theft of Jewish property (which, according to Nazi legislation, belonged to the Reich), and was arrested by the Gestapo. He was scheduled for an appearance before SS judge Georg Konrad Morgen, but due to the progress of World War II, and Germany’s looming defeat, a tribunal was never assembled and the charges against him were summarily dismissed. http://louis1j1sheehan.blogspot.com

He was next assigned to Bad Tölz, Germany, where he was quickly diagnosed by SS doctors as suffering from mental illness and diabetes. He was committed to a sanitarium where he was arrested by American troops in May 1945. At the time of his arrest, Göth claimed to have been recently promoted to SS-Sturmbannführer and, during later interrogations, several documents listed him as “SS-Major Göth”. Rudolf Höß was also of the opinion that Göth had been promoted and, when called to give testimony at Göth’s trial, indicated that Göth was an SS-Major in the Concentration Camp service. http://louis0j0sheehan.blogspot.com

Göth’s service record, however, does not support the claim of a late war promotion and he is listed in most texts as having held the rank of SS-Hauptsturmführer equivalent of a Captain. http://majestic-12-louis-j-sheehan-esquire.blogspot.com

After the war, the Supreme National Tribunal of Poland at Kraków found Göth guilty of murdering tens of thousands of people. He was hanged on September 13, 1946, aged 37, not far from the former site of the Płaszów camp. At his execution, Göth’s hands were tied behind his back. The executioner twice miscalculated the length of rope necessary to hang Göth, and it was only on the third attempt that the execution was successful.

In 2002, an interview book with Göth’s daughter, Monika, was published in Germany under the name Ich muß doch meinen Vater lieben, oder? (But I must love my father, mustn’t I?). For the first time, Göth’s daughter spoke of her mother, who unconditionally glorified her father until faced with his role in the Holocaust, and had committed suicide after giving an interview in the 1980s. http://louis8j8sheehan8esquire.wordpress.com

Göth’s career at Płaszów Labour Camp became internationally known through his depiction by Ralph Fiennes in the movie Schindler’s List; Fiennes earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor, and his portrayal ranked 15 on AFI’s list of the top 50 film villains of all time. Notably, he ranks as the highest non-fiction villain. This grim portrayal showed only a subset of Göth’s crimes. When Mila Pfefferberg, a surviving Schindler Jew, was introduced to Fiennes while on the set of the film, she began to shake uncontrollably in terror, as Fiennes - while in full SS-Hauptsturmführer regalia - reminded her of the real Göth. http://louis8j8sheehan8esquire.wordpress.com At the end of the film, he is shown just before his hanging, smoothing his hair back and saying “Heil Hitler” with almost no apparent emotion just before a Polish soldier kicks the chair out from under him. The film does not depict the real botched attempts at execution, but does show a number of attempts to kick the chair, on which he was standing, from under his feet. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire