Friday, 28 April 2023
Gentle Readers, today I finished the book version of “Daisy Jones & The Six“. Mixed reaction. I felt that the author, Taylor Jenkins Reid, got two of the lead female characters, and not-so-much Daisy, the headliner. Or, perhaps, the whole piece was…thin.
You could say: well, you did spend the time to read the entire book. True. And, overall, I’m thinking, it wasn’t worth my time. Not a poor or bad book, merely one that was less than I thought it could have been.
Thursday, 27 April 2023
I’m trying to expand my horizons. It’s a new year’s resolution-level intention.
Still, I have a hard time with this, Cornus kousa. I can easily accept that it’s a dogwood, yet it still looks off to me. I’m attuned to the rounded bracts of Cornus florida.
I’m working on being more accepting of “new” things and ideas.
Wednesday, 26 April 2023
I believe I have posted photos of blooms from this plant at least twice before…and it could be five or six times….
Tuesday, 25 April 2023
Today, I finished the second of two back-to-back novels: Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield (1850), and Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead (2022) crafted as Dickens’s story in a modern setting.
Dickens’s autobiographical tale highlights child poverty in the England of his childhood, and Kingsolver addresses both poverty and drug-addiction, using Purdue Pharma opiate-saturated Appalachia as her setting. Despite humorous conversations and observations, both portray underlying situations that are rather grim.
I’m glad I read both books, although I tend to dislike obviously derivative works, often without a real reason to do so…one of my quirks—I may have to rethink that bias. I give Kingsolver huge points for reframing David Copperfield so cleverly and successfully. She uses some fabulous turns of phrase and imagery; I am in awe of such skill.
Weakly, the photo is a form of reframing. I took it two years ago today. Yay, 25 April.
Monday, 24 April 2023
The Botanist once described the result of this type of horticultural distortion as frustrated plants. The golden color, a nice contrast to the original green of other garden plants (and its parents), shows the plant has seriously diminished levels of chlorophyll, and thus reduced healthiness.
Sunday, 23 April 2023
I thought I had a good idea of a blog topic. Couldn’t remember it.
Thought I had a decent idea, but I couldn’t articulate it.
Instead, I just whine. Or am forthright.
Friday, 21 April 2023
Off the cuff in my personally distorted sensibilities, it seems early for the peonies to be open here…my read on the season is probably distorted by being in snow country within the last two weeks….
Thursday, 20 April 2023
I found this oblique golden morning light at nine, which seemed late to me…perhaps because I have no firm natural sense of the time zone I’m in (at the moment).
Wednesday, 19 April 2023
I’m still parsing an article* in the NYTimes about the pieces of the kylix that curators at the Met began collecting in the 70s. Over the years the Met obtained pieces from multiple art dealers.
A kylix is a kind of stemmed drinking cup. This one is made of terra cotta and thirteen inches in diameter. It has a nice decoration of a man and woman partying in a circular panel on the interior. The exterior has a band of multiple male figures, described as older fellows chasing younger guys.
The last fragment of the kylix arrived at the Met in 1994, and the restored vessel was on display until last fall, when the Manhattan DA’s office seized it as a looted item.
As near as I can tell, the prevailing opinion is that the vessel was intentionally broken, and the pieces essentially funneled to the Met’s purchasers and curators. This is not the only vessel in the Met’s collection that may have received this treatment.
Remember: to archaeologists pottery contributes to a complex story, while to art historians pottery has aesthetic, and, yes, monetary value—even broken, when an intact vessel would be worth more, the pieces have monetary value.
* The article is “The Kylix Marvel: Why Experts Distrust the Story of an Ancient Cup’s Rebirth,” dated today, by Graham Bowley and Tom Mashberg.
Tuesday, 18 April 2023
How many times have I been in Powell’s and not noticed this? Actually, there are several staircases, and this is on the landing of just one, so it can honestly and easily be missed.
I just checked their website, and the bookstore dates back to 1971. I think the first time I entered its doors was in 1979.
Our country might well be improved if we had a Department of Literature.