A friend of mine wanted to go to an exhibit in Amsterdam which is showing works of Vermeer. The organizer of the exhibit says that Vermeer used light in his paintings in a unique way, that stemmed from Vermeer's connection with the Jesuits in his neighborhood. (!) The tickets for this exhibition are sold out [...]
Pictures today!
For some reason this post disappeared once already... Anyway I was reading something about Dante and there were beautiful pictures of manuscripts of the Divine Comedy from the 1300s. I never thought about what they would have looked like. This one probably is a little fancier than most. Don Simone Camaldolese 1300's Public domain. Next [...]
Just an aside
Instead of writing a blog, I was a substitute teacher today. Fridays start with Mass and, when I took the students I was responsible for over to the church, I felt a bit of homesickness. I spent nearly 12 years going to Mass in that church, on Fridays, with students. I spent nine of those [...]
Cameras that click
Update on this article (5/1). I had two different things on my mind and did not get them separated! Let's try again. There's been a lot of talk in the news about new Artificial Intelligence entities that do pictures or words. People worry about whether they will take over the world or cause all artists [...]
Language
Tom Wolfe wrote a book called The Kingdom of Speech in 2016. I recently reread it. Its most basic premise is that what differentiates man from animal is the ability to speak. What differentiates man from animal is the ability to speak Tom Wolfe, The Kingdom of Speech He writes extensively about Daniel Everett, a [...]