Year: 2022

David Jones, Flora in Calix-Light, 1950 (graphite & watercolor on paper). See a brief Lenten meditation on the drawing here.   I wrote about songs you’re entitled to sing and the value of doing hard things with friends – the latter in memory of the great Paul...

The Franks Casket is an exceptionally curious object. Made probably in Northumbria in the 8th century, it offers an eclectic collection of images: The front (shown above) features both the Adoration of the Magi and that unpleasantly weird figure from Norse-Germanic...

The Hove Amber Cup (ca. 1750 BC), one of many treasures at the World of Stonehenge exhibition at the British Museum. ⎯⎯ A passage from one of the great contemporary memoirs, Helen Macdonald’s H Is for Hawk: It was always there, kneeling by Mabel on her prey, that the...

Some wonderful typography from The Wisconsin Central Lines, back in the day. From the same era on the other side of the pond, Croydon, South Loondon, 1892: ⎯⎯ I wrote a pretty long post on what I’m trying to do with my Invitation and Repair project and how the...

The Halstow Wassail takes place each year on a Devon cider farm that has been in the Gray family since the late 1600s. Watch this beautiful film of it. It’s all about the microbes! One of Auden’s last great poems is his “New Year Greeting” to the “Yeasts, / Bacteria,...