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Archive for December, 2008

My Diary

Coles Phillips (1880-1927) attended Kenyon College, where his first drawings appeared in the yearbook, The Reveille, then moved to New York after his junior year to make his fortune as an illustrator. This is from the cover of Good Housekeeping, January, 1914.

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Eminent Victorians

Lytton Strachey’s 1918 biographies of Cardinal Manning, Dr. Arnold, Florence Nightingale and General Gordon are said to have changed the way history is written, but they would be enough simply for their glimpses into the lives of four people we don’t think much about these days, from Nightingale’s first moments in the soldiers’ hospitals of [...]

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Litter

In a gated golfing community in North Carolina: laminated instructions on how to set a small animal trap; a Full Throttle energy drink can; a Top Flite 1 golf ball, “Straight”; an envelope addressed to someone in Virginia (which I mailed); plastic wrap; a soggy newspaper; a Dr. Pepper can; tinfoil; a shredded Pepsi can; [...]

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On Art

“What other people may find in poetry or art museums, I find in the flight of a good drive — the white ball sailing up into the blue sky, growing smaller and smaller, then suddenly reaching its apex, curving, falling and finally dropping to the turf to roll some more, just the way I planned [...]

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The Incredible Journey

Sheila Burnford’s wonderful book, The Incredible Journey (1961) led to a wonderful film of the same name two years later, and I recommend them both to you. The film, produced by the Disney studios, is at long last available on DVD, although only to members of the Disney Movie Club; I imagine that will change. [...]

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On Silence

Here Mr. Erskine joined them.
“There’s no such thing as silence,” he said positively. “I can hear twenty different sounds on a night like this without counting your voices.”
“Make a bet on it?” said Charlotte.
“Done,” said Mr. Erskine. “One, the sea; two, the wind; three, a dog; four…”
The others passed on.
– Virginia Woolf in Jacob’s Room [...]

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On the Perils of DIY

Allen Lewis Brooksy Burton
Went to buy himself a curtain,
Called on Greenburg, Moe, and Mintz,
Bought a hundred yards of chintz
Stamped with owls and all star-spangled,
Tried to hang it, fell, and strangled.
– A poem by James Thurber written during a meeting with Harold Ross, editor of The New Yorker, and pushed across the table to E.B. White; [...]

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My Favorite Christmas Movie

Die Hard (1988)
Watched it again this evening, and it still holds the magic.

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Keep It Simple

“Except ye utter by the tongue words easy to be understood, how shall it be known what is spoken? For ye shall speak into thin air.”
– I Corinthians 14:9

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Happiness

“We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.”
– George Bernard Shaw

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