My son's Christmas present to us was tickets to see Cirque de Soleil's Luxia Mexico show, up at Dodger Stadium. It was terrific! They used water and light to such clever effect ( Read more... )

Today's post features excerpts from a book about Diana Sperling, who was an indefatigable painter of real life scenes during the Napoleonic era. She works in so many delightful details of her home, what people wore and did ( Read more... )

I went up to see The Cloisters, something I have wanted to do for years, but either time or weather prevented it. Yesterday was perfect weather, clear, mid fifties, just right for a long walk through the beautiful garden (which is still very summery) and then a stroll through the rooms of the museum, which is a medieval to Renaissance collection ( Read more... )

I have been up in the redwoods for a week--nature's art. I'd post a picture but they are all turning sideways and as yet I don't know how to fix that. My hosts, Deborah J. Ross and my long-time best friend Dave Trowbridge and I have had an excellent time, talking writing, going out for walks, and when we want to, each retiring to a room to write. ( Read more... )

Tomorrow is the two hundredth anniversary of the publication of Pride and Prejudice, which has made a whole lot of people a whole lot of money--but not Jane Austen. But what she gained was fame, as well as a hand in shaping the modern novel. Tomorrow Book View Cafe will look at Austen mania, but today, here is my take on the book, for modern ( Read more... )

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Thanks to green_knight for this link to a twelfth century boy's doodlesI've always loved these brief glimpses of real people. A treasured memory is the front leaves of a very battered and dull Latin historical treatise aimed at schoolboys, printed in the early 1600s, on which some unknown boy had sketched out different styles of doublets. He'd also practiced ( Read more... )

I've been on the run showing my house guests all over Southern California. Too bad we can't do internet runs while sitting on the freeway. I could have caught up on every missed post going back ten years. Ah well, wait for the implants.

One observation before I get to the post I had some ideas about. Monday my visitors wanted to see The Getty ( Read more... )

Anyone who has spent an hour (or more) standing in the withering heat of Las Vegas just to watch the Bellagio fountains will probably find this as exciting as I do.

ninjahijinx offered free icons for anyone coming by, as a way of generating interest in their art and comics website here. I asked for a middle aged lady with some swashbuckling style, figuring, hey, even if it's only within the bone casing of our skulls (or mine, anyway) old bats can bucket too, eh ( Read more... )