Hoarded Links

September 5, 2022

Our Native Birds of Song and Beauty Jon Day on Hoardiculture: My father has always denied that he’s a hoarder, but that’s what all hoarders say. When I...

A Brief Message from the Sickbed

August 29, 2022

The headline says, “How medieval carpenters are rebuilding Notre Dame”, which is dumb, because no medieval carpenters are alive today – people don’t live 700...

The Countryside and the City

August 22, 2022

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...

Miracles and Tears

August 15, 2022

I’m scheduling this for the usual Monday morning time, but – and here I’m quoting from a recent blog post – I’m off for a brief writing retreat, to see if I...

Conservation

August 7, 2022

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...

Hearses at Daybreak

August 1, 2022

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,...

Color

July 25, 2022

An illuminated manuscript from eighteenth-century Pennsylvania -- beautiful full-sized image here. How Guernica flopped: “By nearly every measure, Picasso’s...

Gophers and Beatles

July 18, 2022

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...

A Bustle in your Hedgerow

July 11, 2022

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,...

Roadrunning

July 4, 2022

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...

Spheres, Goats, Modernists

June 27, 2022

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...

A Bit of Iconoclasm and Much Blogging

June 20, 2022

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...

Discovering the Maize God

June 6, 2022

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...

Getting Back to Business

May 23, 2022

Via my friend David Hooker: Isn’t it time for you to outhorse your email? Paul Klee’s puppets are delightful or creepy, and sometimes both. Some of my recent...

Further Miscellany

May 17, 2022

I love the idea that a university would create and publish its own calendar/diary for its members, and, though I have no connection whatever to Cambridge...

Treeish

May 10, 2022

As the maker of a website called Gospel of the Trees, I see some exciting material in this story about great British trees and forests. Most of my photos...

On Music and Gentleness

May 3, 2022

Another of these intermittent messages.... Look: The greatest a capella group in history is The Persuasions. This is not something about which reasonable...

A Literary Update

April 27, 2022

One shortcoming of many of us who critique our social media culture: We say what we don’t like but fail to say what we like. I have tried to remedy that...

An Unexpected Message

April 20, 2022

Hello again. Here’s another of my intermittent messages. The most time-consuming part of my old newsletter was selecting, formatting, and uploading the...

Just Checking In

April 13, 2022

Hello folks! I am not able to resume the newsletter at this point, not in its former glory anyway, but I do want to send a brief update. I have an essay out...

A Quick Note

March 25, 2022

Hello folks, just briefly: I don’t expect to be able to resume this newsletter anytime soon, but I am still writing at my main blog; I post mainly photos but...

Lenten Thoughts and Roman Images

March 14, 2022

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...

Songs We're Entitled to Sing

March 7, 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...

Anomalous Electric Prairie

February 28, 2022

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...

The Cup and the Hawk

February 21, 2022

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...

Typographical Excellence and Portable Soup

February 14, 2022

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...

The Dynamic Range of Microbes

February 7, 2022

Diana Bloomfield 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...

Harmonies and Dissonances

January 31, 2022

Updating the furnishings of a 1960s church I’ve been blogging away, thanks to the support of people who have bought me dragons. (N.B. I could always use more...

Sir Shi and the Wanderer

January 24, 2022

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...

More Fakes, Plus Hittites

January 17, 2022

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...

Easy Edges and Harder Ones

January 10, 2022

Twofold overture: I didn’t expect, at all, to get the kind of response I have received to my Buy Me a Coffee initiative. I don’t primarily mean the financial...

The Wordsmith on the Throne

January 3, 2022

Brazilian cover designs, from the invaluable Steven Heller. From an interview with Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood: There are scenes in “Spencer” that require...

These Hallalujous Courts

December 24, 2021

Merry Christmas to all! Right now I am especially craving light-hearted things, and “Father Christmas,” like so much else by the late and so-much-lamented...

From the Horse Library to the Centipawn

December 20, 2021

An East German Advent Calendar from 1980 In central Java, Ridwan Sururi and Luna are the Kudapustaka -- the Horse Library. I do miss Christopher Hitchens: It...

Fake! (also, Advent!)

December 13, 2021

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...

Adventing

December 6, 2021

We have entered Advent -- that first and most curious season of the Christian church’s year, which simultaneously awaits Christ’s Second Coming and looks...

Texas, London, Wisconsin

November 29, 2021

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...

The Library

November 22, 2021

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...

Prophets and Churches and a Table of Welcome

November 15, 2021

“When London is in Ruins”: Gustave Doré’s The New Zealander Please check out all the cool new changes at the Comment website! Among them: The Welcome Table,...

Julian Laughs Heartily

November 8, 2021

“Nautilus,” by Louise V. Durham I mentioned last week that I am going through a difficult time, and several of you replied with thanks for the newsletter,...

Imagery and Contemplation

November 1, 2021

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...

Ambiguities

October 25, 2021

Jenny Holzer 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...

Buster, Josephine, and Autumn

October 18, 2021

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...

Returning in Something Almost Like Glory

October 11, 2021

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...

Books and Chairs and Years Gone By

September 6, 2021

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...

Talk to the Hand

August 30, 2021

Carry Ackroyd paints the poems of John Clare Via my friend Richard Gibson, a passage from Chirologia, or, The naturall language of the hand composed of the...

The Axe, the Wood, the House

August 23, 2021

Musician, by Jim Leonard 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...

Done List

August 16, 2021

The Hartwell Memorial Window at the Art Institute of Chicago Good Monday morning! (Well, that’s what it is as I write, anyway.) As I look forward to a busy...

Architectural Thoughts

August 9, 2021

Martin Gerlach 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...

It’s Good to Be Back

August 2, 2021

Welcome, friends, to the triumphant return of Snakes & Ladders! I trust that once more you’ll hear from me weekly, now that I’ve had a bit of a break. Two...