Da Vinci

In my humble opinion, Leonardo Da Vinci was the greatest human being in recorded history.  Now, I know everyone has his or her own selected person.  I could not say enough about him here nor list all of his genius and talents to prop up my selection.  But, I read a few factoids that I didn't know and thought interesting. 

I love his horse studies.  He designed one that was never finished.  Someone, somewhere was going to finish it.  I'll have to look that up.

And because of my devotion and love for dogs, I love his dog studies.

Of course, you know which dog study is my favorite.

So, here is a tiny list of things I didn't know about Leo.

1.  Da Vinci and Michelangelo were frenemies and rivals and would cause serious, reality show worthy scenes in public places by insulting each other.

2.  Researchers at universities studied the Mona Lisa painting with face recognition software and concluded that ML was 83% happy, 9% disgusted, 6% fearful and 2% angry.

3.  Ever the animal rights activist, Da Vinci enjoyed purchasing caged birds so that he could set them free.

4.  Da Vinci was also a committed vegetarian which was exceedingly rare in his day.

Bill Gates purchased Da Vinci's Codex a few years ago for $30 million dollars and has loaned it to museums around the world.  So many things interest me about Da Vinci I really wouldn't know where to start.  I was in the Loire Valley in France a few years ago and didn't even know he was buried there.  I would have loved to visit his grave site.

It's Spring

It's spring alright.  How do I know?  I'm digging through cabinets and drawers.  Thirty years of detritus and all sorts of things.  Rubber bands, receipts and files from too long ago have filtered down to the bottom of cubbies and piles of paper are being purged.  As I dig I wonder, why did I save these old rubber bands, clips, ink pens that no longer work and stacks of papers?  

To tell the truth, I am somewhat of a magpie by nature, but much of this is ridiculous.  Saving things on the chance that they might be needed someday only adds to clutter.  

Like a slip of paper I have saved for years.  It has Phi 1.618 written on it.  Below is the sign for Phi.

Phi, pronounced like fly, was discovered by Fibonacci and is the solution to a quadratic equation (math was my worst subject in school so I know I didn't save this for the math).  Phi is also known as the Divine Proportion, The Golden Mean, or the Divine Ratio.  So, how does it effect us?  Well, Phi is the proportions of the human body as well as animals, plants, DNA, the solar system, art and architecture, music and even theology. Phi unwinds the chambers of a nautilus and the spiral of a galaxy, arranges seeds in the head of a sunflower. So how does Phi 'figure' into my spring cleaning?  Well, I guess it seemed interesting at the time, but out it goes.  

UPDATE ~ I found another slip of paper from a magazine article which is why I copied Phi down in the first place.  Susan Dell (yes, that Dell) started a clothing company in the 1990's (that's how long I have held on to these scraps of paper) and she named it Phi, after the divine proportion.  So, nothing profound or life changing.  Just a bit of minutia that interested me at the time.  Finally throwing them out.  But, oh no.  Wait, here is a third scrap.  I must have really been impressed.  Seems that Phi is the principle on what Leonardo da Vinci based his illustration of The Vitruvian Man. I could go on but I think I've probably lost most of you by now.  So, nuff said about Phi, but isn't it beautiful ~ like spring?