Plenty of Nothing

Our Lady of Lebanon

Source.

Fiskegumma

This granite statue of a fishwife which stands on the site of the former fishmarket in Malmö was carved in 1949 by Clarence Blum from Liverpool. Source.

Bring Me the Head of Yang'asha

Source.

Hirosaki Apple Park

I have an orchard. I have a statue. Apple Park. Source.

Duplessis

Aluminum (?) statue of Maurice Duplessis in his hometown of Trois-Rivières. Source.

The History of the Croats

The History of the Croats (1932) by Ivan Meštrović. Or Moebius. Source.

Bethune

Source.

Karuizawa

The past few weeks the place name Karuizawa has cropped up. Turns out it's a small resort town in the hills of Nagano that became popular after it was recommended by the 19th-Century Canadian missionary A.C. Shaw, who built a chapel there. You can see why he liked it, it looks so much like Canadian Cottage Country. I've seen the name mentioned in an anecdote about Yasunari Kawabata in Donald Keene's memoirs, and in a short story by Banana Yoshimoto, and looking back through the files, in volume seven of Genshiken. In every instance the place is connected to sexual desire in some way, which would explain why it's a popular place to get married.

Bring Me the Head of Queen Victoria

On this date in 1963 the FLQ blew up a statue of Queen Victoria that stood in Parc Victoria, Ville de Québec. The bits now reside in the Musée de la civilisation. Read about it.

The Canadian Phalanx

Detail from The Canadian Phalanx, sculptued by Ivan Meštrović in 1920, and set up in its present outdoor location at 284 Wellington in Ottawa in 1972. Hard to imagine anyone actually lining up shoulder to shoulder like that in the age of machine guns. Source. Urbsite.