In the 1790s, as William and Catherine Blake were living in Lambeth, printing Visions of the Daughters of Albion, Songs of Experience, and the engraving commissions that made them, for a little while at least, relatively prosperous, they would have had an unusual neighbor – London’s first circus, a fifteen-minute walk from their house. Astley’s Amphitheatre, […]
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It’s interesting to see the places where an artist’s imagination might fall a little short. As an Alabama kid, I can’t help noticing that for William Blake, one of those places is snakes, in realistic rather than visionary form. Even in London (as I am now), I carry my ingrained habit of scanning the ground […]
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Behold a new marvel in the annals of Frankenstein memorabilia – a life-size wooden chair I’ve just purchased from its creator, local artist Tom Sheppard. As you can see, nonhuman beings can look past the Creature’s appearance and detect his inherent benevolence. 🙂
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On the top floor of the Accademia in Florence, in an overlooked panel of a medieval altarpiece, is an image that’s easy to ignore: a shepherd’s dog, barking at the angel who’s suddenly appeared to rouse the obviously startled shepherds from their sleep. There were shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flocks […]
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“[We] never turn sentimental about something of real value — wilderness, wild animals, small towns, baseball, mountain music, our privacy — until the way we live and do business has pressed it to the edge of extinction. Then we administer affectionate last rites to everything we failed to love enough.” – Hal Crowther My boxing […]
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Here at the hinge of old year and new, with books to promote and a new website underway, I’m wondering — again — about the relationship between writing and social media. It is what we need to communicate and self-present, to Get Ourselves Out There, no way to avoid it entirely. It does a lot […]
Read more1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 The same was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4 In him was life; and the life was the light of men. …. […]
Read moreToday in Internet horror: rare Argentine dolphin dies after being passed around by a selfie-taking crowd. Sticky and sandy and dry and eager, eager, seeking hands, all over that moist skin, sucking its moisture away in curiosity or excitement or wonder or unexamined narcissistic need, suspending it out of the sea until it heats and […]
Read moreThe Internet’s aflame with outrage over the killing of a male lion in Zimbabwe – a park favorite named “Cecil” – by a dentist from Minnesota. The lion was baited outside of park boundaries by the hunter’s guides so he could be shot, which is not only immoral but illegal. I mourn the death of […]
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