It’s a gloomy day here in New England, and it was a gloomy election on Tuesday, so I thought I’d brighten things up with a photo of a New England aster stolen from Tom Whelan’s Nature Diary:
A flower for a dreary day
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Category Archives: Images
Images from Costa Rica
My friend Tom Whelan decided to go to Costa Rica and makes us all jealous. Here’s a photo he took there of a hummingbird:
And here’s a waterfall:
And here’s a strange white butterfly:
Go buy some of his photos.
Crocus
Because it finally feels like spring around here, I thought I’d steal a crocus from Tom Whelan’s Nature Blog:
Who wouldn’t want to see Agatha Christie with her surfboard?
This was why the Internet was invented: photos of famous authors doing sports. Here is Ms. Christie at Waikiki in 1922. Dude!
Some of the photographs are meh: Stephen King throwing out the first pitch at a Red Sox game hardly counts as a sports photograph. The Winslow Homery photo of a young Ernest Hemingway fishing is cute, but that fishing doesn’t qualify as a sport, if you ask me.
But Jack Kerouac scoring a touchdown in high school? Stephen Crane posing with the rest of the Syracuse University baseball team in 1891? Wow!
In honor of Agatha Christie, here are the Beach Boys singing “Little Surfer Girl” live in 1964. Has it really been 50 years?
In the bleak midwinter at Bare Cove
We went for a New Year’s Eve walk in my little town. Things were pretty bleak at the cove:
A little less bleak here:
Cold, but a little cheerful:
This is about as cheerful as it got:
Have a warm new year!
Winter images
First, real photography: frost crystals by Tom Whelan:
Now, something from me, looking out my front door during tonight’s snow:
And the trees in my back yard, lit up for the holidays:
Sparkly mayonnaise jars and modern art
During my recent trip to Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts I took this photo of modern food items treated somehow to make them sparkle:
I’m guessing this is a trenchant commentary on American consumerism. But I could be wrong–the artist might just enjoy making mayonnaise jars and cracker boxes sparkle. In either case I’m a bit baffled by why these objects are in a major art museum.
Seems to me you go to a museum like the MFA to view objects that you’ll want to view again and again. Like this happy, wise statue:
Or this famous Renoir (sorry for the tilty iPhone):
I don’t think I’m cut out to be an art critic.
A photo of a statue and a painting of a girl looking at the statue
The Boston Museum of Fine Arts has a cute effect in one of its galleries. On one of the walls is a realistic painting of people gazing at the paintings and statuary in that very gallery. In the painting you see a girl looking at a statue, with the statue itself standing just a few feet away from the painting. Here’s a photo of the statue and, in the background, the painting of the girl looking at the statue:
Michelangelo drawings at the Museum of Fine Arts
The drawings are on loan from the Casa Buonarotti in Florence. Okay, my photographs could have been better. What do you want for free? The light was dim to protect the drawings.
Cleopatra was my favorite. Notice the asp encircling her like a necklace:
Here’s a famous Madonna and Child. That’s one well-fed baby:
And here is a study for the head of the Madonna in some painting:
Who doesn’t like busts of Roman emperors from the Museum of Fine Arts?
As a pre-Father’s Day treat I went to Buston’s Museum of Fine Arts with my son (the good one, not the other one). I took lots of random photos. Here are three photos of Roman emperors, in descending order of greatness. Plus a goddess.
This is a well-known bust of Augustus as a young man (it’s an idealized likeness from after his death):
And here’s a somewhat placid-looking Hadrian:
And here is the loser emperor Balbinus, who managed to rule as co-emperor for three whole months before the Praetorian Guard offed him (238 AD was not a great year to be a Roman emperor):
As a special bonus image, here is a statue of the goddess Juno, which I am told is the largest Classical marble statue in North America. I should have my good kid stand in front of her to show you her size.
Richard Bowker 