Summer and Family

I love summer--bonfires and babies and family and puppies.

Grandma loves babies even more than I do (if it's possible). She can usually be found with the baby on her lap.

Prayers, Please

Mama Leopard isn't well, and it's not good timing.

Wedding Hair

London, The End

We traveled out to see the site of the Olympics in London. There wasn't much to see besides a mall and loads of construction.

And here's more of those yellow rapeseed fields from the return flight:

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Whoa--not only can you pay via email, soon you can pay from space.

London.9, Chiswick House and Whistler's Grave

The Chiswick House was just down the street from where we were staying in London, so we had to stop by. It's a lovely garden, with lots of people around, enjoying the place. The Chiswick House is a Palladian villa from 1729, and, according to Wikipedia, and an early example of the English landscape garden.

Taking a walk around the neighborhood, we stumbled on a lovely country church. And then we realized that it is where Whistler and his wife are buried.

Their tombstone is gorgeous.

My only complaint was, I felt like his wife got the short end of the stick in terms of being memorialized:

A Random Assortment

~ Fascinating pictures of the intersection between politics and art--old and new memorials of the Haymarket Affair in Chicago.

~ Rest in peace, George Carey, TME. (Wonderful, kind remembrances here from many men I know and love. Although from the looks of this list, you wouldn't think that Carey had met any women.) A kind man with a sparkling, understated sense of humor. I audited an independent study on the Agrarians with him, several years ago. Every time my colleague, JBL, and I entered the room, he would say, "Hi, friend. Hi, Emily." I think by the end of the semester, he would just say, "Hi friends." But it took him a long while. And then there was the class in which he gave JBL a small bag of chips. Charming. (TME is the best nickname ever.)

~ I love eggplant. And I love this picture:

~ And I love tennis.

~ "A plague of women’s backs is upon us in the book cover world." ("Show Some Spine")

~ On learning to ride a bike at 33:

I crashed into a fence. I crashed into a garbage can filled with extra pedals. I crashed into a woman whose jeans had a design that caught my eye. Evidently, staring at an obstruction guarantees you’ll steer into it. I wish one of the teachers had pointed this out, because it seems important.

London.8, V & A

Right after the William Morris House, Francisco and I headed to the Victoria and Albert Museum on a whim--the William Morris House said that William Morris and Dante Rossetti designed a whole room at the V and A. The V and A happened to be open quite late that night for an event, so we just hustled over.

The Green Room (that Morris and Rossetti designed and decorated--above and below) was alright, but nothing special (and really too dark to enjoy properly).

Actually the main dining room, which is, with the Green Room, part of the cafeteria for museum-goers, was much prettier:

Here's the entryway to the museum:

And the building's courtyard--I think there's something about the apotheosis of Victoria above one of the doorways:

The museum itself was delightful--it was filled with music and there were cocktails and champagne. That seems to me to be the way to reinvigorate museums and make them accessible.

Here's a great green dress from the late 1930s! I would totally wear that. Actually, I would totally trade out my wedding dress for this. (There was a whole section of dresses, which I really enjoyed.)

There is plenty of beautiful glass:

I love this chandelier:

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You can email people money. Weird.

London.7, William Morris House

Francisco and I hiked (read: rode the train) way out to East London to the end of some line to see the William Morris House, which has lately been reopened. It was delightful--it explored the vast creative talents of Williams Morris and the people who surrounded him--from stained glass to wallpaper patterns to politics and printing to furniture.

(I think that the designs on this piece are Rossetti's.)

(He was a socialist--here, in favor of labor: "When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman")

(An Arts and Crafts chair following Morris's work.)

London.6

One day it was rainy, so Francisco and I went to a bunch of markets. It was really a mistake--we went to the markets in the rain, and the art museums on a day that was overcast, but mostly dry. The Camden Markets in Camden Town I was told were "grungy." That is an understatement--there were things I saw there that were very frightening and I'll probably never forget. And, of course, plenty of prints and engravings with which we'll decorate our new house.

Bottom photo by Francisco

Quotes, Grandmother edition

"He's nice looking, but humongous." --Grandma Leopard

"I have the feeling that everyone these days is a hypochondriac. But I'm just strong because I'm from South Dakota." --Francisco's grandmother on one of Francisco's relatives who is missing the wedding for health reasons

London.5, The Tate Britain

The Tate Britain has just been reorganized to proceed chronologically, without commentary. I doubt I've been before, but if I have, it was 10 years ago and I don't remember, so I can't compare.

It was great--there are loads of Turners, which gave me a new appreciation for him. There is Dante Gabriel Rossetti's first major painting, The Girlhood of Mary Virgin, which couldn't be more chock-full of symbolism and is accompanied by a poem below it.

There is lot's of Eric Gill (I ready Beauty Looks After Herself back at Baylor). And a whole lot of other stuff.

A Random Assortment

~ PAL cleverly extends the MOOC model to college administration:

If we’re going to have the MOOC to cut costs, why not the MOOA--massive open online administrations--too? Instructional costs have going up--doubtless in part because of underworked and incompetent professors. But growth in size of administrations far exceeds that in size of faculties. And don’t get me started on administrative compensation!

~ "Some Realms I Owned: Elizabeth Bishop in Manhattan"--a travel essay about Bishop, New York, and Brazil (via Hopkins).

~ Delightful and hilarious: Coffitivity: ambient sounds designed to increase productivity. It captures what I long for, but is difficult to ensure in a coffee shop--noise, including from voices, that is not quite loud enough to distinguish what they're saying (it drives me nuts to actually overhear the details of peoples' lives).

~ Political science (especially theory-friendly) journal rankings. Ok, so, I realize that this won't be of uber-wide interest to my readers, but this is a way for me to bookmark stuff I want to come back to.

~ Ditto this: a name change checklist (via Gold at Like Mother, Like Daughter). I had no idea that changing your name is this hard--logistically and psychologically. I will definitely walk all the way down the aisle at my wedding, but I may not be able to go through with this name changing business. Also: 75 dollar to change your name on your passport! When I just bought a new one a year and a half ago!

~ New idea for wedding reception entertainment. I love it! Kudos to Fr. O.P. for creative evangelization (via Hopkins).

London.4