Archive • Snakes & Ladders • Buttondown

A Shift of Attention

August 16, 2023

Friends, I love making this newsletter but I can’t manage it right now — I am hitting the pause button, possibly for a long while. However, I still will be...

The Eye Chart and the King Actor

August 14, 2023

Mal Evans’s diary What’s been going on at Ye Olde Blogge? More Babylon Should academics be rewarded for generativity? Wendell Berry one and two A bunch of...

Silence, Minuets, Gold

A 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...

Physicists, Poets, and Other Stock Characters

I’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...

I Am Inquisitive in the Lord

What a gorgeous edition of Christopher Smart’s weirdly wonderful poem Jubilate Agno. One of my first published essays — an excerpt from my dissertation — was...

The Way the Cards Are Dealt

The 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...

Presidents, Aunties, and Hexagonal Rooms

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....

This site identifies the photographer here as Ilaria Miani, but evidence is lacking. Great Cartier-Bressonesque shot, though, taken at Inle Lake in Myanmar....

Cities and Ruins

How Stephen Heller lost his heart at the Olivetti store I’ve finished (for now anyway) my blog-through of Augustine’s City of God, focusing on his treatment...

Art Out of Time

Early Computer Art in the 50’S & 60’S (Des)Ordres (1974), Vera Molnar Catfish and spaghetti: Depending on whom you ask, this combination is either as...

Tiger, Cathedral, Atlas

The art of Tony Sarg A brief preview of my forthcoming edition of Auden’s collection The Shield of Achilles. “I just bought the only physical encyclopedia...

Clay 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,...

The Comfort of Friends

There 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...

Photographs of the American West by Wim Wenders John Muir, from “A Wind-Storm in the Forests” (1894): Toward midday, after a long, tingling scramble through...

Archbishop of Banterbury

Melissa Cormican’s animal portraits Kieran Healy, responding to the news that Great Britain will have a Free Speech Tsar: As an alternative to ‘Free Speech...

A Bell That Rings True

Photograph by Tony Cearns When the robot revolution comes, this lady will be in big trouble. I eagerly co-sign my buddy Austin Kleon’s desire to become a...

Begone About Your Business

Preston Singletary, Crest Hat (2021). Blown and sand-carved glass. 5½ x 21¾ x 21¾ inches. Photo by Russell Johnson. See a smart and sensitive essay on...

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...

Sameness and Difference

Abraham, from Dream Big, Laugh Often: And More Great Advice from the Bible, by Hanoch Piven and Shira Hecht-Koller. Lately I’ve found a bit of a rhythm with...

Sedentary and Unsedentary Persons

Lectionarily 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...

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. Judging a book by its cover:...

Images and Architectures

Photography by Henri Prestes While my big blog is on hiatus, I’m posting more -- and more experimentally -- on my micro.blog. Just a reminder that you can...

Colin Hayes I 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...

In Lieu of a Newsletter

Friends, I don’t have a newsletter for you this week because I am taking a brief head-clearing roadtrip to New Mexico and a bit of Colorado. But I do have a...

Comedy This Morning

February 27, 2023

Holly Astle W. H. Auden: Comedy … is not only possible within a Christian society, but capable of a much greater breadth and depth than classical comedy....

Mudlarkers and Drinking Fountains

February 20, 2023

The Sussex Downs in Winter by Eric Ravilious (1935) From an exhibition by the Society of Technotextnicians John Ruskin, from The Seven Lamps of Architecture...

Crocodiles and Thesauri

February 12, 2023

Tirzah Garwood, “The Crocodile” (1929) -- otherwise known as a "walking bus," but I love the word "crocodile" in this context. Looking at maps of Mars like...

System, Sequence, Mystery

February 5, 2023

Eric Ravilious, “Vicarage in Winter” (1935) Searching for the mystery of flowers. The joys of Blackletter type. I love this wall-mounted unfolding desk. My...

The Quality of Mercy

January 29, 2023

Paper sculpture by Layla May Arthur So much wonderful music coming from my friend and former colleague Shawn Okpebholo, whose “Songs in Flight” – featuring...

Ain't Got Time for the Small Stuff

January 23, 2023

I started this newsletter on Mailchimp before moving to Buttondown – and if you ever start a newsletter of your own I would strongly discourage you from...

A Riot of Linkage

January 16, 2023

Forthcoming in Comment: Now let’s just do links! (My collection of hey-this-could-maybe-go-in-the-newsletter links is getting huge, so I’m going to shrink it...

Highways of Empire

January 9, 2023

Johann David Steingruber’s Architectonisches Alphabeth (1773) Matt Crawford’s Why We Drive is full of wonderful reflections, like this one: Americans noisily...

Here's What's Next

January 2, 2023

I’m calling this the question for 2023. Cassiodorus, writing in the sixth century about Psalm 91: This psalm has marvelous power, and routs impure spirits....

Christmas Epiphany

December 26, 2022

Shakespeare’s Snow-Globe Illustration by John Austen John Donne, from a sermon preached at St. Paul’s Cathedral on Christmas Day 1626: The life of Christ was...

Whoops! Broken link

December 19, 2022

Sorry for the second intrusion into your inbox, but: This is the post by Tish Harrison Warren in which she commends A Rocha International. Blessings to all,...

The Winter Storm of Advent

December 19, 2022

This 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...

Picture-boxes in the stars

December 12, 2022

Bethlehem in Germany, Glitter on the sloping roofs, Breadcrumbs on the windowsills, Candles in the Christmas trees, Hearths with pairs of empty shoes: Panels...

December 5, 2022

Harold Burdekin, photograph from London Night (1934) A very different image from London: Piero della Francesca’s Nativity has been restored and is back on...

Madnesses, Gentle and Otherwise

November 28, 2022

Edna Andrade Maybe scholars and collectors of manuscripts are afflicted by an ungentle madness: Frederic Madden had his own neuroses. He maintained a...

The Idea You Have

November 20, 2022

Bill Myers Love 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...

Welcome to the Working Week

November 14, 2022

John Baeder 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...

Truthier Truthiness

November 7, 2022

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,...

October 31, 2022

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...

Illuminations and Retreats

October 24, 2022

More here. An 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....

Long-haulers and Loafers

October 17, 2022

French signage The bean man brought his beans to market every weekend -- week after week, year after year, decade after decade -- until one morning he was...

Patient, Skilled, Peaceful, Goal-Oriented

October 10, 2022

Odd monuments of Westminster Abbey: The abbey held writers to a higher moral standard than the rich. Stanley cheered that Aphra Behn, writer and all-round...

October 3, 2022

Two weeks ago, I failed in my duty to my readers: I forgot to remind you all of the coming of an Ember Week. I am sorry. But you may remember them in the...

Of Dust and Disks and Music for Animals

September 26, 2022

Etching by John Sloan from a 1938 edition of Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage. This amazes me: The customers that are the easiest to provide for are the...

Revisiting, Restoring, Recomposing

September 19, 2022

David Frum’s long report on the past, present, and future of the Benin Bronzes is fascinating, though I have some serious doubts about his arguments. All of...

September 12, 2022

A storyboard by Wiard B. Ihnen for Fritz Lang’s Man Hunt (1941). Also: storyboards from Hitchcock’s The Birds. I love storyboards, and wish they were easier...