I just came back from a wonderfully pleasant and relaxing lunch at Einstein, a cafe/restaurant here in Leiden. Einstein's name frequently comes up in conjunction with Leiden, of course, since he worked here at the university.
Then when I came home, and relaxed even more by surfing the Net, one of the first things I stumbled across was this series of historical black and white photographs, "colorized" to render them in color. Some of them are beyond wonderful, such as the now-in-color portraits of Charlie Chaplin and Mark Twain and Walt Whitman. At least one is genuinely terrifying, capturing the look on Joseph Goebbels' face as he learned that the photographer taking his portrait -- Alfred Eisenstaedt -- is Jewish. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/09/colorized-photos_n_4242066.html <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/09/colorized-photos_n_4242066.htm\ l> But, synchronistically enough, one of the photos that most caught my attention was the portrait of Einstein. I found myself wondering who the other guy in the photo was, and whether it might have been a young version of my grandfather. The truth turned out to be much better. Some of the stories on this page are priceless: http://www.sff.net/people/rothman/einstein.htm <http://www.sff.net/people/rothman/einstein.htm>
