Head of Jesus by Rembrandt van Rijn
First, a little trivia question, courtesy of National Geographic, to shake those cobwebs from your brain (answer will be at the end of this blog):
What Saharan country bordering on Mali and Chad has a population growth rate of more than 3.5 percent a year?
First thing I did today was jump into a story about the national Susan G. Komen Foundation cutting off all the funding it gives to Planned Parenthood. Last year, Komen gave $680,000 and the year before it gave PP $560,000, all to be used for breast-cancer screening and breast health education in places where Komen doesn’t have the facilities to provide or refer for those services. (Note: the Toledo-area Komen charity has never given a dime to Planned Parenthood.)
Komen said it decided to halt the funding because of its new policy forbidding grants to groups that are under government investigation. Florida congressman Cliff Stearns launched an investigation of Planned Parenthood in September to see if it has used any taxpayer funds to pay for abortion. Planned Parenthood Federation of America received $360 million from the government last year, Stearns said.
Needless to say, this is a delicate situation to report, because it involves the hot-button issue of abortion. Toledo’s Komen group was already reluctantly thrust into the news last year when the local Catholic bishop said parochial schools and parishes couldn’t donate to Komen because the national charity would not rule out the possibility that it may someday fund cancer research that uses embryonic stem cells.
The story will be published tomorrow; I’ll post a link.
Second, I had purchased a ticket a while back to see and write about an exhibit of Rembrandt artworks of Jesus, on display at the Detroit Institute of Art. Due to a series of breaking news stories, I had to reschedule the Detroit trip, and almost had to cancel it again today. But I was optimistic I could make the trip and get the Komen story done, and that’s how it worked out.
The Rembrandt exhibit is fantastic. His artwork is so magnificent, the figures so lifelike and the compositions so rich and expressive. I could have stared at the portraits for hours but I had to keep moving. Besides, the timed tickets are all sold out and the galleries are so crammed with people it’s hard to give each artwork its due.
The most interesting thing is that Rembrandt was the first major artist who painted Jesus as a dark-haired Middle Easterner, using Jewish men who lived in his Amsterdam neighborhood as models. Prior to the great master, Jesus was always portrayed as a Northern European/Greek God.
That story is set to run this Saturday, along with my interview with Jimmy Carter.
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Trivia answer: Niger.
