Links I Like.
The web-site that I value probably above all others is the Web Gallery of Art. This site belongs to the new genre of "virtual museums." It covers individual works of art, both painting and sculpture, by European artists during the period 1150 - 1750, or roughly the Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque periods.
You can catch just a glimpse of the site's riches by examining its offerings on a minor artist such as Spinello Aretino. First you are taken to a page of thumbnails. You may, if you wish, also consult the brief biographical sketch, where you learn that Aretino was an Italian artist of the 14th century who specialized in frescoes and murals.
But the real glory of this site lies in its enlargements. They come in reproductions of extraordinary color and detail.
Aretino painted, for example, several frescoes in the sacristy of the S. Miniato al Monte church in Florence, Italy. One wall fresco represents scenes from the life of St. Benedict. A ceiling fresco in the same sacristy portrays four doctors of the early Church.
Another example is Aretino's fresco portraying Pope Alexander III receiving an ambassador. The artist's rendering of the sumptuousness of the papal surroundings is memorable indeed.
(Note: As always, to derive the full effect of any highly visual web-site, let the pictures load on a first tour of the page, and then enjoy them as they load much more quickly the second time around.)
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Today's'Blog:
A gray, wet-looking day, with light rain. I understand, though, that cold air is again headed our way.
12:30 p.m. Oh, I am so glad that I did manage to get a web-essay, no matter how modest, up this morning.
I conceive of my basic "charge" as being to provide my readers (if such there be) with a "hit" of beauty each day. It is almost a "vitamin," in my mind, for the soul.
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A little later. I had to give in this morning and recognize that I have been in a bit of a slump. And then think how to deal with it in a way that might help me back out of it.
And I came up, I think, with a helpful strategy. My slumps seem to come, above all, from expecting too much of myself. An over-busy "to do" list is a sign that I am asking for trouble (however unintentionally).
So I have listed just a very few goals for today . . . and, sure enough, I am already more willing to be active and doing.
My goals for the first part of the day are: (1) to go through all my small morning tasks; and (2) to put up even a very brief web-essay.
Next, I hope to clean the counter in the kitchen, and then place all the cat food on it (thereby freeing up much of the kitchen table for other purposes).
Then: inflate my new air mattress; place it on the bed frame and make it all cozy. And then, for this evening, send an e-mail message to my kind friend Gertta.
That all seems eminently do-able, and I do not mind as I contemplate going through the day. (As opposed to so many days, which I dread as I contemplate them, even before they begin.)
(For tomorrow, I may have to plan nothing more than looking after my medical bills -- that has been on my list for a couple of weeks now (or, in the longer term, for several months). Perhaps my insides just feel that a single task-set of such unpleasantness is enough for one day!
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3:15 p.m. Ah, that feels very good altogether! And let that be a lesson to me, eh? By assigning myself 10 things every day for the last week, I got little done. By assigning myself four things for today, I have already done three of them (with only one small, simple one for this evening).
As I said, let that be lesson to me! (Please let me learn that lesson, please, please, please.) (And btw, a lesson that one does not even mind learning . . . so many lessons are unpleasant.)
And now, off to town . . . coffee, paper, food for tonight. And then back and let's see how things are.
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