Humble Cottages and a Royal Game
The art of Eric Ravilious (1902-1942) is deceptively simple and straightforward. Here is a wonderful tribute by Niall Gooch. I have a few Ravilious images on my blog — I should add more.
I’ve gone back to using my micro.blog page, for reasons I explain in this post. It’ll be where I record interesting quotes, links, and brief messages. Maybe even audio posts — we’ll see about that.
The cover for my forthcoming book, complete with words from wise people telling you how wonderful it is, may be peeked at here. Please zoom in.
There’s a new Bob Dylan record coming out in a few days. Can it possibly be as good as Alexis Petridis says it is?
We often think of politics in terms of issues, but here’s a wonderful reminder from Andrew Sullivan that deeper and more important than any stance on policy lies the matter of one’s political disposition. And what an elegant case he makes for his, that of the classical liberal:
Liberalism is not just a set of rules. There’s a spirit to it. A spirit that believes that there are whole spheres of human life that lie beyond ideology — friendship, art, love, sex, scholarship, family. A spirit that seeks not to impose orthodoxy but to open up the possibilities of the human mind and soul. A spirit that seeks moral clarity but understands that this is very hard, that life and history are complex, and it is this complexity that a truly liberal society seeks to understand if it wants to advance.... It’s a spirit that delights sometimes in being wrong because it offers an opportunity to figure out what’s right. And it’s generous, humorous, and graceful in its love of argument and debate. It gives you space to think and reflect and deliberate.
That sounds pretty darn good right about now.
My buddy Austin Kleon has been doing lots of collages during the lockdown, and I’ve especially been enjoying his houses. who needs Zillow when you have paper, scissors, and imagination?
If you have ever wanted to know how to play the Royal Game of Ur, Dr. Irving Finkel, Curator of Cuneiform at the British Museum, has you covered. He can teach you how to write cuneiform too. Here he is holding a facsimile board for an ancient game — a facsimile he made when he was nine years old:
