New research indicates that “The Ugly Duchess,” a famous painting in England’s National Gallery, and the inspiration for some of John Tenniell’s illustrations in Alice in Wonderland, is probably an accurate portrait of its subject, according to this report in The Guardian. The unidentified woman in the painting apparently suffered from a rare form of Paget’s Disease.
Hat tip: Mirabilis.
First of all, thanks to the folks at the Kråkeelva Lodge of the Sons of Norway, Hutchinson, Minnesota, for their hospitality Saturday evening. They were incautious enough to invite me to speak to them, and to pretend that my PowerPoint presentation on Leif Eriksson and Vínland was interesting.
Speaking of Leif Eriksson, it’s Columbus Day. We Norwegians celebrate Leif Eriksson Day on the 9th, not because we think Leif reached America on that date (he would have sailed as early in spring as possible), but in order to preempt Columbus’ celebration.
Not that anyone notices.
Dr. Gene Edward Veith posts today on an important issue I’ve covered before on this blog—that the old story that says Columbus sailed “to prove the world was round” is complete codswallop. It’s something Washington Irving put into a biography of Columbus (apparently on a day when he didn’t have the energy to walk to the library to verify his information), and school children learned it and believed it for generations.
Here’s a fact—almost every educated person has known the world is round since the times of the ancient Greeks. Continue reading Leif vs. Chris: Grudge match!
No doubt you have already reacted to the announcement of this year’s Nobel Prize for Literature going to Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, the French author whose books have been one our shelves for years. You heard the news and said, “Why should I care about that?” I know. We are alike in this way. The Literary Saloon has a good bit of reaction.
Here’s a quick religious joke. This reminds me of some fishing advice. Never invite only one Baptist to fish with you, because he’ll drink all of your beer. Course, if you give him lutheran beer to drink, maybe his doctrine will improve.
Slate reports there’s strong evidence of an early romance in Emily Dickinson’s life. Not exactly a scandal, I think.
Hat tip: Townhall.
We, the People, may be in serious trouble.
[In a post called “What a Mole,” Patrick] Deneen . . . insisted that the failure of political leaders to call for self-restraint is “an indication of our enslavement to appetites over which we have no control. This latter condition was defined by the ancients as a condition of servitude, not liberty.” In an entry dated October 2, 2008 called “Democracy in America,” Deneen raises questions about the viability of democracy in a culture that eschews limits and self-control. Citing Tocqueville’s insight that democracy was a collection of mores as much as it was a system of government, he reviews Tocqueville’s warning about how the very success of democracy could lead to its undoing.
Just to cheer you up amidst everything you’re hearing about financial collapse and hard times a-comin’, here’s my favorite Great Depression joke:
A guy is standing on a street corner, selling apples. The sign on his cart says, “Apples— $5,000 apiece.”
A passerby stops and looks at the sign. “That seems like a lot of money to ask for an apple,” he says.
“Yeah, it is,” says the vendor. “But all I have to do is sell one.”
For some reason I always think of novel writing when I tell that joke. Because we deal in a commodity that’s worth zero, until we find somebody willing to pay for it. Then suddenly we have a valuable asset.
I think I’ll probably have to stop watching the TV show Bones again.
I stopped a while back, but was seduced in again, because there’s nothing on at that time that I’m interested in watching (or there didn’t used to be; I need to check the new schedule). I was lured back because a) I’m fascinated by that whole forensic science business (as long as it’s on TV and I don’t have to smell the evidence), and b) the star, Emily Deschanel, is smoking hot—not in the reconstituted Pam Anderson style, but in the exquisite Ingrid Bergman style.
The thing that bugs me about the show is that it has religious overtones. Not constantly, but one of the running themes is the conflict between Dr. Temperance Brennan’s atheism and FBI Agent Booth’s easygoing Catholicism. Booth generally gets the best of it too, as it’s obvious that he’s happier and better adjusted than she is.
The show even makes efforts, now and then (and this is fairly rare on television), to present practicing Christians as fully-rounded, sympathetic human beings.
And that’s the problem. Because the show has a definite opinion on what a real Christian is. Continue reading Include me out
This is the centenary of the birth of novelist John Creasey, who received “743 rejections slips along the way – before his first crime thriller was accepted in 1932,” writes Margaret Murphey. “Creasey wrote 620 novels under more than 20 pseudonyms, selling 80 million books worldwide and writing across many genres, but he is best known for his crime fiction.”
I wonder how many of those rejections were styled as “Um, we don’t publish this sort of thing. Did you even read our publication before submitting?”
This wag, a TV writer and probably far more wealthy than I am, has a list of books not to bother with, as if he knows something about it. He says The Lord of the Rings isn’t worthy reading and makes for a good screen against unacceptable friends. He hates Joyce’s Ulysses too, so his list isn’t all bad.