“On the fourth day comes the astrologer, from his crumbling old tower.” From The Mysterious Stranger: A Romance (1916) by Mark Twain, with illustrations by N.C. Wyeth.
Monthly Archives: November 2010
Nice Hat
It’s 1922, and I’m pretty sure I know how this movie ends.
Dogs, yes. Birds, no.
“I once had a mynah bird, and it wasn’t a pleasant experience. When I put music on, it would start yelling at me. It was like living with an ancient, fractious aunt. The fucker was never grateful for anything. Only animal I ever gave away. Maybe it got too stoned; there were a lot of guys smoking weed. To me it was like living with Mick in the room in a cage, always pursing its beak.”
– From Life (2010) by Keith Richards
Joy
One of the most joyous and beautiful images I have ever seen, a photograph by Raymond G. Woolfe, whose classic book on Secretariat is in print once more. The young lady pictured, by the way, has graduated to real horses, and rides every day.
Conversation
Charles Raymond Macauley in Fantasma Land (1904), from Weird & Wonderful: Discoveries from the Mysterious World of Forgotten Children’s Books (2010) with thanks again to Ellen Heath and Laura Heath.
Christmas?
This image from “Christmas Comes but Once a Year” (1903) by L.J. Bridgman, collected in Weird & Wonderful: Discoveries from the Mysterious World of Forgotten Children’s Books (2010), confuses the heck out of me.
Look and Learn
And they wonder why children have nightmares. These images from “Look and Learn” (1940) are collected in Weird & Wonderful: Discoveries from the Mysterious World of Forgotten Children’s Books (2010), compiled by Welleran Poltarnees, for which I thank Ellen and Laura Heath.
N.C. Wyeth
I just finished reading an extraordinary biography of N.C. Wyeth by David Michaelis and recommend it to anyone who has ever been touched by this artist’s work.
Women Reading
Lisbeth, Karin and Bolla, by Carl Larrson (1853-1919)
On to Berlin
Illustration by Harry Grant Dart (1869-1938) from the cover of Literary Digest, September 8, 1917, a time when even the mildest of journals were caught up in the Great War, a.k.a. World War I.
