Several women in my family have suggested that my posts have become morbid lately, excessively preoccupied with death. Is that true? And, if so, is it a problem? After all, I have reached… Read More
In a post last week, I described Spinoza's Theological-Political Treatise (1670) this way:There are no miracles, he wrote, nor divine providence. No immortality of souls. The Bible is not th… Read More
Yeah, just what we need, "termite-inspired robots." As if termites were not bad enough. You have often read here about my battle against the termites on our tropical island. Without consta… Read More
Cleaning out my office here at the college, I came upon a box of graph paper. That wonderful tissue-thin, orange-printed Keuffel & Esser graph paper. Linear. Semi-logarithmic. Log-lo… Read More
If you are a first time visitor to this site, or returning after a long absence, I regret to tell you that Science Musings, the blog, has ceased to publish, after over a decade of almost dai… Read More
In response to BB, an MRI and CAT showed the surgeon where he wanted to go, and as far as I know it was a straight shot thru tissue, After surgery, I had complete relief from tremor fo… Read More
Thanks to everyone for being so kind. Some of you have asked what it was like. In the OR the surgeon screwed my skull into a beautiful anodized steel cage. Then I was taken… Read More
The porch light is off. Refreshments have been put away. And still old friends (who I know only by name) continue to visit. How do I show my appreciation for such loyalty? I can't contin… Read More
...Thisby knowsso little of the worldas yet: the bitshe can see through thechink in the wallhas made her heart beatfaster in its cage...A few lines from a poem of Linda Gregerson. Never min… Read More
I walked the other day, as is my habit, to the far end of the beach, where the beach comes near to the public road. About twenty American college students, guys and gals, presumably on inte… Read More
In 1504, the year Hieronymus Bosch probably painted The Garden of Earthly Delights, hundreds of miles to the south the Florentines set up in the center of their city Michelangelo's just comp… Read More
During the summer between my sophomore and junior years at the University of Notre Dame, while in the throes of newfound Catholic piety, I crafted a coffee table in my father's basement work… Read More
Three A.M., the hoo-ha hour. Wake from nightmarish dreams. Rehearse in darkness all the things that might go wrong, a catalogue of ominous thoughts. The edge of the bed might as well be th… Read More
Tout les matins du monde sont sans retour: The mornings of the world are without return. The line is from a novel, and gave the title to a film. It might describe the left-hand panel of Bo… Read More
Hieronymus Bosch painted his ever-intriguing triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights in or about the year 1504 -- on a cusp of history (click to enlarge). The Middle Ages are ending. Moder… Read More
The poet Yeats said of the poet Shelley, "There is for every man some one scene, some one adventure, some one picture that is the image of his secret life, for wisdom speaks first in images… Read More
Each day at college, as I go to collect my laptop, I pass the Art Department's bulletin board. And, in recent weeks, I have been drawn up short by an announcement for a gallery show by the… Read More
Let me say a few words about another painting that came up in a conversation lately, Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Ecce Ancilla Domini ("Behold the handmaid of the Lord"), painted in 1850. (Click… Read More
Tom is here (Ireland) for a visit. He and his wife have just spent a few days in Amsterdam where they visited the Rijksmuseum. The hit of that visit was the four Vermeers, including The Mi… Read More
"It is not easy to live in that continuous awareness of things which alone is true living," wrote the naturalist Joseph Wood Krutch in The Voice of the Desert. The nail. The iron nail. Ver… Read More
I first wrote about Jan Vermeer's The Milkmaid back in the late-summer of 2009, when the painting was the star of a show at New York's Met. I was so enchanted with the painting that I made… Read More
I offer here Jan Vermeer's The Geographer, painted in Holland in 1668-69, as an iconographic image of religious naturalism, particularly that with a Roman Catholic flavor. (Click to enlarge… Read More
A few more thoughts on those Wayne Thiebaud landscapes I shared the day before yesterday. I suggested that the terrestrial environment is inevitably going to be a human artifact, that we m… Read More
Paul's "Use it or lose it" applies most of all to me. And I've resigned myself to losing it. Mind you, I miss it. Ten years of daily habit. And as I approach 80, I need that stimulation… Read More
The American artist Thomas Eakins (1844-1916) is perhaps best known for his paintings of rowers on Philadelphia's rivers, but two of his major works are interesting documents in the history… Read More
We've seen this painting here before, William Merritt Chase's Ringtoss (1896). Well, no, we haven't. But it is certainly evocative of Charles Singer Sargent's The Daughters of Edward Darle… Read More
The American artist John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) was a superb draftsman. He also veered successfully towards impressionism. He could be pompously formal, or endearingly sentimental. Bu… Read More