Why all good Republican children are raised to pray for a rainy (or snowy, up here) first week of November. Because WE know that Republicans exercise their franchise in greater proportion than the Democrats. Because, you know, think what you will, we take citizenship more seriously than people who are discouraged by bad weather.
I, of course, have the delight of voting for 3rd and 4th party candidates, because I know the state as a whole will pull the Government Teat Lever.
Ok – AppleTV has brought me a good number of surprises so far. But tonight, a showery night with rain sounds outside, my “recommended for you” queue pulled up Brideshead Revisited. That music!
He told me and, on the instant, it was as though someone had switched off the wireless, and a voice that had been bawling in my ears, incessantly, fatuously, for days beyond number, had been suddenly cut short; an immense silence followed, empty at first, but gradually, as my outraged sense regained authority, full of a multitude of sweet and natural and long forgotten sounds: for he had spoken a name which was so familiar to me, a conjuror’s name of such ancient power, that, at its mere sound, the phantom of those haunted late years began to take flight.
I’ve been teaching the Church of the Holy Sepulcher this week in Early Medieval Art and Architecture, without ever explaining that I love Helena more than Krautheimer, even if Krautheimer is the background I teach out of.
I need to read the novel again before I start typing out quotations. “The women are still doing what they do before they come downstairs. Sloth has undone them – we’re away.”
The new provost has asked to attend a meeting of each department this fall. Therefore the Department of Art and Architecture had to actually come up with a schedule of meetings! I suppose we could have done this in other years, but somehow it seldom works that way.
For all the current administration may have made my friend Fr. Baker miserable, Vanderbilt is still better off without Gordon Gee, spendthrift.
It’s actually quite pleasant today – currently 57 – but the heat just came on! Maybe the manager is getting ahead of the curve. But on a Sunday?
Students playing some sort of frisbee-game in front of tents left over from Homecoming / Parents’ Weekend.
About the only tech site in my daily reading list nowadays is Daring Fireball – which is almost all-iPhone5-all-the-time right now. I’ll get one eventually – and I may switch to Verizon. AT&T reception has gotten steadily worse (for me at least) in Geneva this calendar year, and they deny that there is anything wrong at all. Reception inside my apartment has gotten so poor that I can’t move around with my phone once a call has started, and the only reliable place to make a call is from the bathroom. Silly!
From what I’ve read, the Verizon version of the iPhone is also much easier (and cheaper) to use abroad. That may or may not be helpful — but signal at home would be nice!
I know that I sometimes complain because people in England with metal detectors find such interesting stuff.
Can’t complain about this American find.
Quiet recluse turns out to be rich. Based on the weight of the gold, $7 million rich. But lots of the pieces are old, so the value may go up.
In answer to the commenter who was curious about the students’ definitions of art – I gave them all back. They’ll show up again on the midterm and maybe I can snaffle some then!
I’m hoping that as they see more art, their definition will be broadened. We were looking at Egyptian tomb statuary yesterday, for instance. It’s beautiful, it’s created by people, but it wasn’t meant to be seen – it was put straight into a tomb and, ideally, wasn’t supposed to come out. One of the things I asked them was, “If you see something like this in a museum now, to what extent does it meet your own definition of art?” I hope that sets things stirring!
HWS inaugurated the Colleges Bocce Court! Sebastiano Lucci and Stan Mathews judge a close one. The Art History Team (Ut Pictura Poesis) lost in the first round, but we had a great time.
One of my colleagues posted this on Facebook.
That’s the headline. The story is better! She was going to paint over them!
“I thought they would be awesome canvases. They were $9.99 a piece and I just thought they would be great to just draw on them and paint over them because I didn’t like them as paintings. They were really ‘70s kind of looking, but not ‘70s in that fun, kitschy way, ‘70s in a different way that I don’t really enjoy, so I was like, ‘I’m going to paint big cat heads or whatever,’” Feeback,who specializes in pet portraits, said. “I was going to paint on them and so I bought them.”
She showed them to a friend at the art fair, and her friend spotted labels on the backs of the canvases that read: “Weatherspoon Art Gallery. University of North Carolina – Greensboro.” Her friend told her to find out more about the paintings before she painted them over.
Feeback took the canvases home and they languished in her art studio until mid-June. She nearly painted over them a few times.
“But I decided, you know, I’ll check, I’ll Google these guys. The first one I Google was Bolotowsky. And I Google it and the first thing I saw was the Wikipedia page and I was like, ‘Holy crap. I better get those up off the floor over there,’” she recalled. “And then it just went crazy. When I saw what it was I thought, ‘This painting has got to be worth something, but what do I do now? I don’t know anything about selling a valuable painting.’ We made $200 at the art show that day.”
You know, someone de-accessioned those!
I was trying to upload a photo to illustrate my post, but WordPress is not cooperating. Oh, well – my ARTH 101 students turned in a homework on Friday about crosses in the graveyard behind Houghton House. They’re pretty good! I’m encouraged for the semester.
They’re pretty good that is except that most of them lump the dead together as “followers of the Christian religion,” as if there is such a discrete organization. SIGH.
Jerry Orbach played a defense attorney in the 2nd episode of season 2!
