Mal Evans’s diaryWWhat’s been going on at Ye Olde Blogge? More Babylon Should academics be rewarded for generativity? Wendell Berry one and two A bunch of quotes — head over and see! Eskerrik asko for Euskara: “In retrospect, Franco’s attempt to destroy Euskara helped...

AA pocket medicine chest, with the Rod of Asclepius on its cover; copied from an original found at Pompeii.I’m still blogging about Babylon, among other things.David Bordwell, in The Way Hollywood Tells It:Far from being a noisy free-for-all, moreover, the industry’s...

II’ve just returned from a wonderfully restorative week at Laity Lodge, the kind sponsor of this newsletter and my home away from home. My tummy is full of Chef Ryan’s good food and my heart is full of love.An exhibition at the Cloisters: “This exhibition examines the...

WWhat a gorgeous edition of Christopher Smart’s weirdly wonderful poem Jubilate Agno. One of my first published essays — an excerpt from my dissertation — was on Smart, one of the eighteenth century’s most prominent “mad poets.” Samuel Johnson loved Smart, as this...

TThe breeder from whom we bought Angus would like to have a portrait of him now that he’s a big boy. The above is what happened when I tried to take that portrait.Recently on my blog: My one piece of advice about personal-organization systems; some thoughts about John...

W WSJ: “After me, there won’t be any others,” says Roland Reisley, absorbing what it means to be the last original occupant in a Frank Lloyd Wright house. Reisley is sitting in his hexagonal living room on a rocky hill near Pleasantville, N.Y. The most famous...

TThis site identifies the photographer here as Ilaria Miani, but evidence is lacking. Great Cartier-Bressonesque shot, though, taken at Inle Lake in Myanmar. These fishermen are quite photogenic: see for instance this photo by Rachel Mary Prout. These are the Intha...

How Stephen Heller lost his heart at the Olivetti store I I’ve finished (for now anyway) my blog-through of Augustine’s City of God, focusing on his treatment of “the two cities.” I’ve given them all the tag CD23 – CD for Civitas Dei. I’m thinking about doing this...

Early Computer Art in the 50’S & 60’S (Des)Ordres (1974), Vera MolnarCCatfish and spaghetti:Depending on whom you ask, this combination is either as congenial as shrimp and grits or as regrettable as a bad marriage. The food writer Adrian Miller once noted, “It...

The art of Tony SargAA brief preview of my forthcoming edition of Auden’s collection The Shield of Achilles. “I just bought the only physical encyclopedia still in print, and I regret nothing.” The roof of Notre Dame de Paris is being rebuilt using medieval carpentry...

CClay mastiffs, found in the excavated ruins of a palace in Nineveh, were meant to protect the property from demons. They have cuneiform inscriptions on them, one of which reads ē tamtallik epuš pāka – or, “Don’t think, bite!” Who’s a good boy?No proper newsletter...

TThere have been many tributes to Tim Keller since his death last week; I could only add a few words. This from Russell Moore does much to capture the Tim I knew. And I love this from Tish Harrison Warren:In my early 20s, I attended an event where Tim Keller, an...

Photographs of the American West by Wim Wenders.JJohn Muir, from “A Wind-Storm in the Forests” (1894):Toward midday, after a long, tingling scramble through copses of hazel and ceanothus, I gained the summit of the highest ridge in the neighborhood; and then it...

Melissa Cormican’s animal portraitsKKieran Healy, responding to the news that Great Britain will have a Free Speech Tsar:As an alternative to ‘Free Speech Tsar’, consider one or more of the following: The Duke of Discourse. Warden of All Chit-Chat. Equerry of...

Photograph by Tony CearnsWWhen the robot revolution comes, this lady will be in big trouble. I eagerly co-sign my buddy Austin Kleon’s desire to become a professional human loser. Stanley Cavell, writing in 1994 about the Marx Brothers: “I have been aggrieved to hear...

S Scott Joplin was born in 1868 or thereabouts. Probably in Texarkana, probably on the Arkansas side. His father was a railway worker and for a while he was one also, though eventually he was able to begin making a career he preferred as a music teacher. Then he...

LLectionarily speaking, it’s a week late to be posting Sebastiano del Piombo’s The Raising of Lazarus. But here it is anyway. On the National Gallery website there’s a cool video of how such a painting is moved.Two weeks ago I wrote about how David Hume explains...

From the Folio Society edition of Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Tombs of Atuan. I’m teaching the Earthsea books right now; what a joy. JJudging a book by its cover:Perfect to hold in the hand, [the book] was neither too heavy nor large to deter handling, nor too light to...

Photography by Henri PrestesWWhile my big blog is on hiatus, I’m posting more – and more experimentally – on my micro.blog. Just a reminder that you can subscribe to a digest of those posts here. It goes out every Friday.Y’all know how much I love to see the cool...

Colin HayesII wrote about going to the canyon and letting go of my plan. With a pencil in hand, I read Roger Deakin on having a pencil in hand. I wrote about mercy in the Lord of the Rings.Sam Bulleit, The Tsushima CyanotypesThe webpage for the Mars Reconnaissance...

Holly Astle.WW. H. Auden:Comedy … is not only possible within a Christian society, but capable of a much greater breadth and depth than classical comedy. Greater in breadth because classical comedy is based upon a division of mankind into two classes, those who have...

The Sussex Downs in Winter by Eric Ravilious (1935).From an exhibition by the Society of Technotextnicians.JJohn Ruskin, from The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849):God has lent us the earth for our life; it is a great entail. It belongs as much to those who are to...

Tirzah Garwood, “The Crocodile” (1929) – otherwise known as a “walking bus,” but I love the word “crocodile” in this context.LLooking at maps of Mars like this one, I just want to go back and read Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy again. Since writing this books,...

Eric Ravilious, “Vicarage in Winter” (1935).SSearching for the mystery of flowers. The joys of Blackletter type. I love this wall-mounted unfolding desk.My Man Godfrey – a truly great movie with a truly great title sequence.I’ve been listening to the newest entry in...

Paper sculpture by Layla May Arthur.SSo much wonderful music coming from my friend and former colleague Shawn Okpebholo, whose “Songs in Flight” – featuring the great Rhiannon Giddens with other brilliant singers – recently premiered at the Metropolitan Museum of Art...

Johan Hybschmann, Book of Space (2009).Henri Cartier Bresson’s first Leica.Cartier-Bresson was rarely photographed, but somebody got him here.I’ve been listening often to the Emerson Quartet’s performance of Bach’s Art of Fugue. I think the string quartet version of...

Johann David Steingruber’s Architectonisches Alphabeth (1773)MMatt Crawford’s Why We Drive is full of wonderful reflections, like this one:Americans noisily claim the idea of liberty as their own, but the more you see of the world, the more comical this becomes. A...

I’m calling this the question for 2023.CCassiodorus, writing in the sixth century about Psalm 91:This psalm has marvelous power, and routs impure spirits. The Devil retires vanquished from us through the very means by which he sought to tempt us, for that wicked...

Shakespeare’s Snow-Globe.Illustration by John Austen.JJohn Donne, from a sermon preached at St. Paul’s Cathedral on Christmas Day 1626:The life of Christ was a continual Passion; others die Martyrs, but Christ was born a Martyr. He found a Golgotha (where he was...

TThis year London’s St. Pancras Station “Christmas Tree” deserves those scare quotes, because it isn’t a tree and isn’t Christmassy. But it’s kinda cool! – a 3D vertical compilation of London’s architectural landmarks. Here is a much larger image.“The stampmaking...

Bethlehem in Germany,Glitter on the sloping roofs,Breadcrumbs on the windowsills,Candles in the Christmas trees,Hearths with pairs of empty shoes:Panels of NativityOpen paper scenes where doorsOpen into other scenes,Some recounted, some foretold.Blizzard-sprinkled...

Harold Burdekin, photograph from London Night (1934)AA very different image from London: Piero della Francesca’s Nativity has been restored and is back on view at the National Gallery:What a family learns from caring for a vineyard and its surrounding land for...

Edna Andrade.MMaybe scholars and collectors of manuscripts are afflicted by an ungentle madness:Frederic Madden had his own neuroses. He maintained a lifelong rivalry of near-deranged intensity with Anthony Panizzi, the British Museum’s keeper of printed books and...

Bill Myers.LLove to see Frederick Wiseman picking out some Criterion videos. I almost said I want to be that sharp when I’m 92, but I guess I should first hope to make it to 92. I tell myself that when I’m 92 I’m gonna be dropping truth-bombs left and right, but (my...

John Baeder I I always have time for another story about why Stradivari violins sound so good. Tree of the year! And if you don’t know my coffee-table website Gospel of the Trees, here it is. Chiraag Shah on pseudo-iconoclasm: Compared to such acts of iconoclasm, the...

The abandoned village of Craco.Re: my entry last week on “forest bathing,” the Economist weighs in on a certain linguistic habit:When TED, a conference, staged several talks on the concept [of ikigai or “reason for being”], a tweet by a baffled Japanese observer went...

The American Kestrel, AKA Sparrowhawk. The English calligrapher Irene Wellington giving thanks for the gift of a turkey: One of the participants in my recent Laity Lodge retreat said that when she remembered the retreat she would think of vampires and donkeys –...

More here.AAn illustration by Sam Weber from a Folio Society edition of Frank Herbert’s Dune:See this 2017 story about the Folio Society’s design process.Norbert Wiener, from The Human Use of Human Beings:Messages are themselves a form of pattern and organization....

French signageT The bean man brought his beans to market every weekend – week after week, year after year, decade after decade – until one morning he was found dead at his house. He was 86 and just beginning to talk of retirement. He was, Ann Finkbeiner says, one of...