Michael Heizer’s megasculpture, “City” – about which I am immensely skeptical … but I think I have to see it, if only because of this: “The whole gestalt thwarts a culture of Instagram selfies, something Heizer is especially proud of.” And because Heizer has been...

Wendell Berry, from Life Is a Miracle:The language we use to speak of the world and its creatures, including ourselves, has gained a certain analytical power (along with a lot of expertish pomp) but has lost much of its power to designate what is being analyzed or to...

A lovely page describing the conservation by the Getty Museum of a Roman sarcophagus. An essay by a photographer explaining why his most faked-looking photographs aren’t fakes at all.In 1960, The Atlantic featured a big report on the proposed rebuilding of London,...

A 17th-century woman’s will.Richard Seal – seen here with candidates for Salisbury Cathedral’s girls’ choir, the first such choir in an English cathedral, which had previously had boys’ choirs only – has died at age 86.Elena Urioste and Tom Poster play Donald Grant’s...

Kazumasa Nagai The Atlantic makes its entire 165-year archive available online – quite a big deal for those interested in American history. A lovely brief reflection by my friend and colleague Frank Beckwith on his return to Catholicism fifteen years ago. The next...

Art by Kit Boyd Are we from the savannah or from the forest? The history of replica food displays A terrific XKCD explainer on hailstones. In Great Britain, it’s all about the hedges – and has been for a very long time. C. S. Lewis, from an essay called “Our English...

A genius for our moment: “For over a decade, a Chinese woman known as ‘Zhemao’ created a massive, fantastical, and largely fictional alternate history of late Medieval Russia on Chinese Wikipedia, writing millions of words about entirely made-up political figures,...

Decades ago, I looked in every issue of the Atlantic for the inevitable painting by Guy Billout – so it’s nice to see that he has an Instagram. You’ll find much to consider in this important reflection from Comment’s editor, Anne Snyder: The principle of sphere...

My friend and colleague Philip Jenkins on iconoclasm old and new: It was in this context that I had my personal encounters with an active and literal iconoclast, a brilliant English priest who had entirely imbibed the “Vatican Two” ethic at its most radical....

It me. No, wait, it a maize god. Some magnificent woodcuts by David Gentleman from a limited edition of Swiss Family Robinson. Sophie Yeo, of the fine environmentalist newsletter Inkcap Journal, has created a page called Six Thousand Years of Forests. It’s rather...

Piranesi’s fantasias. And while we’re considering Roman things, here’s the extraordinary Aeneas intaglio from the Getty Museum: I blog, therefore I blog. I wrote a post about ownership, consumption, mortality, and “litel myn librarie,” and another about how to become...

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,...

I’ve been blogging away, thanks to the support of people who have bought me dragons. (N.B. I could always use more dragons.) But I also have a few essays coming out in periodicals in the coming months – I’ll link to them here when they become available. Ian...

A peacock mosaic at the recently excavated Church of the Holy Apostles in southern Hatay province, Turkey. ⎯⎯ The Holkham Bible Picture Book, ca. 1330 ⎯⎯ A while back, I chatted with Joy Clarkson about old books. Here’s the conversation in text form. Some tags on my...

Claudia Rilling ⎯⎯ In my capacity as … um, let me revisit that later … anyway, I have declared 2021 to be The Year of Repair! Also, I am a Homebound Symphony. ⎯⎯ Re: my recent issue on fakes and fakery, see Byung-Chul Han: The Chinese have two different concepts of a...

Brazilian cover designs, from the invaluable Steven Heller. *** From an interview with Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood: There are scenes in “Spencer” that require your music to be already in place, like the Christmas Eve dinner where Diana has a breakdown while a string...

Merry Christmas to all!

In central Java, Ridwan Sururi and Luna are the Kudapustaka -- the Horse Library. *** I do miss Christopher Hitchens: It is all there to emphasize the one central and polar and critical point that Dickens wishes to enjoin on us all: whatever you do — hang on to your...

Surely you all have enough of me, but … micro.blog, where I keep my digital scrapbook – photos and quotes and links, rather than full blog posts – has introduced a new feature that allows you to get a weekly digest of posts. You may subscribe to it here. *** The above...

Recently, I was able to spend a few days at my great place of refuge, and also the co-sponsor of this newsletter, Laity Lodge. What a blessing. A few more photos are here. *** Kermit Oliver is a prominent and highly-regarded painter – and designer of scarves for...

World’s most beautiful libraries *** Alix Hawley on Twitter: Library patron of the week: the fella who came in, wandered around for a good while, then asked pleasantly, “What is this place?” When I was in graduate school at the University of Virginia in the early...

Please check out all the cool new changes at the Comment website! Among them: The Welcome Table, a second Comment newsletter, this one hosted by Greg Thompson: “a monthly column devoted to exploring the practice of hospitality as it has surprised some of our society’s...

I mentioned last week that I am going through a difficult time, and several of you replied with thanks for the newsletter, prayers, and well-wishes. I am so grateful for the support! In my Medieval Intellectual Tradition Class, we’ve been reading Julian of...

That’s a time-lapse photo of a highway (I believe U.S. Route 163 in Utah) leading to Monument Valley – with the center of the galaxy in the background. One of many astonishing astronomical photographs by Michael Abramy – but if that particular one doesn’t blow your...

Thomas Mann, Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man: I do not think that it is the essence and duty of the writer to join “with great fanfare” the main direction the culture is taking at the moment. I do not think and cannot from my very nature think that it is natural and...

Autumn is just beginning to hint at us here in central Texas, but whenever it comes I find myself thinking about this passage from C. S. Lewis’s Surprised by Joy in which he describes how in childhood he received certain “glimpses” of something beyond his experience,...

If you have read The Wind in the Willows – and let me pause here to say that if you have not read the Wind in the Willows then what are you doing with your life? Stop reading this silly newsletter, call in sick to work, and start reading that wondrous book right now....

Breaking Bread with the Dead will be out in paperback tomorrow! Please share the news with everyone in the entire world. *** Vermeer before: Vermeer after: See this lovely film of the restoration. *** The surprisingly complicated history of the Adirondack chair....

Via my friend Richard Gibson, a passage from Chirologia, or, The naturall language of the hand composed of the speaking motions, and discoursing gestures thereof : whereunto is added Chironomia, or, The art of manuall rhetoricke, consisting of the naturall...

I did something very odd, for me: I wrote a short play. It’s about J. R. R. Tolkien and W. H. Auden, who were good friends – but their friendship was occasionally troubled, I think in part because it was conducted almost wholly through the written word. So I gave them...

Good Monday morning! (Well, that’s what it is as I write, anyway.) As I look forward to a busy week, and of course experience that inevitable sense of things moving too fast, slipping away … … I think I will try Oliver Burkeman’s suggestion: keep a done list. Instead...

Frank Goldberg was born in Toronto and lived in Canada until he was 18, at which point his family moved to Los Angeles in search of a better climate for his chronically ill father. Eventually Frank would change his name to Frank Gehry and become the most...

As described in a recent Laity Lodge newsletter, that’s a cardinal who has been spending a lot of his free time on the deck outside the dining room. I saw him several times when I was there recently for a retreat that warmed my heart and soothed my soul. When I saw...