There is quite a lot of religious art and artifacts in the Speed Museum. Here are two paintings of familiar Biblical scenes for instance Here’s the wedding feast at Cana, in a totally unlikely setting… There are also paintings of scenes from Greek tragedy…. Read more
In our last post we showed some of the Lincoln memorabilia but I left off his life mask by accident, and here it is… Notice the ancient wallpaper, very appropriate in Kentucky since limestone is everywhere… This beautiful marble statue is supposed to represent one of the three Christian virtues… Read more
Ah…Fall. It’s pumpkin and cider season in Kentucky. However, it’s also school time, and so I’m teaching my doctoral students minding my own business on the third floor of the Admin building, when all of a sudden a squirrel shows up clinging to the screen in the window next to my lecture podium. He was upside down coming down from the roof I guess, and trying to figure out where to go. Alert student Sophia Huang, my T.A., quickly took... Read more
There are an enormous number of portraits from various periods in the Speed museums. Artists then, as now had to work on commissions, and one they avoided poverty was doing portraits of rich women and men. Even painters as famous as Gainsborough had to do this. Some very famous portraits have been done in Kentucky, for instance of the great statesman– Henry Clay. But an even more famous native son of Kentucky was Abraham Lincoln born and raised here, and... Read more
O.K. all you Downton Abbey fans, how about a visit on the first day of our England tour next September 2026, to Highclere Castle aka Downton Abbey, and then spectacular Salisbury Cathedral? And that’s just Day One of a great tour. The brochure is below, and I recommend signing up. pronto, as we are only taking one bus load on this tour=42 persons. Here’s the brochure telling you how to sign up for this two week tour in late... Read more
The Speed Art Museum, on the campus of the University of Louisville, turns out to be perhaps the best art museum in all of Kentucky, in terms of the scope and diversity of its holdings. For example, it has a whole 17th century wood-paneled room transported from England to Louisville— which is no small feat. And here it is… Read more
The scientists were right of course. Not only does light bend, so do shadows, and in the Fall the shadows get long. One of my favorite things to do is drive the backroads in the Bluegrass, especially the ones between south Lexington on Military Pike, and then on towards Midway. There are endless horse farms which themselves are beautiful, including the giant one, Windstar, closer to Versailles, but just riding early in the morning with the morning shadows produces remarkable... Read more
After West Wing, Downton Abbey has to be one of the most watched and re-watched TV shows of the last 30 years or so— and rightly so. Julian Fellowes brilliant scripts with witty British dialogue and zingers, interesting characters both upstairs and down in the house, excellent acting and interesting plot lines, leads to millions of people caring about what happens to these fictional characters presenting us with a story of England coming out of the Victorian era and WWI... Read more
This beautiful rendering of 1 Corinthians 13 is on Joni’s last major lp of new material, and it is the best song on the album as well. There are various better albums by Joni from her earlier albums, but few better or more poignant songs than this one. Read more
Lee Strobel was a lawyer. He knew the rules about evidence and proof. And one day he came to interview me at Asbury many years ago. He was writing his first book, that turned out to be big— The Case for Christ. He even had me filmed playing the guitar. The video is still out there somewhere. I was telling him about why Jesus called himself the Son of Man and why that’s a major clue as to how he... Read more
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