Long ago a homeschooling mother of eleven or twelve children remarked that the dirty little secret of her life was how often the important gave way to the urgent. It took me a while to parse this comment because, I admit, I didn’t understand the distinction she was making. Eventually I realized that somewhere deep [...]
The House of Cards. Jean Simeon Chardin, French, 1737 NGA Public domain I have a notation that says "Send note to shawkdudders." Unfortunately, the date for this task, whatever it was, has passed. Fortunately I am frequently disorganized enough to have notes in several places so chances are, I actually did it, whatever it was. [...]
Saint Leonard was born in Limoges, France in the early 500's, shortly after King Clovis I converted to Christianity. According to legend he was a Frankish noble who left the king's court and took up the life of a hermit. As sometimes happens to holy hermits, he was discovered and inundated with requests for prayer [...]
The other day I went looking to see what the NGA had online in terms of paintings of books. (Don’t just put ‘books’ in as the prompt. You will get the entire museum since every picture is in someone’s book.) I started looking for this famous picture of Dante, (attributed to Bronzini, 1530) holding his [...]
“Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow For Thine is the Kingdom Between the conception And the creation Between the emotion And the response Falls the Shadow Life is very long” From The Hollow Men, T. S. Eliot In my short story struggles, I am at the [...]
