SEASONS IN THE SUN: If you had to name two women/girls, or images of women–whether characters or archetypes–who represented, to you, particular seasons of the year, who would you name? like this: spring: Artemis (mostly because of her virginity, though a friend pointed out that as the goddess of the hunt she’d also be associated with autumn and the hunter’s moon), Alice summer: Maria Lactans, Andromakhe (or, in a completely different vein, Jean Grey/Phoenix–really, don’t feel like these images need... Read more

I watched my blog in Newport Pagnell…. (I think I’ve done that one before.) Amy Welborn: I’m not done yet with this post, and don’t expect I’ll even make a sortie on the comments; but I’ll be thinking about it for a while…. …The question that has bugged me for ages is different from that I hear asked by others. Others try to rebuild, to recreate that old sense of Catholic culture–which is admirable, but is it possible? No, what... Read more

For me a dogma is only a gateway to contemplation and is an instrument of freedom and not of restriction. It preserves mystery for the human mind.—The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor (much more from her soon–this is such an awesome, fun, fruitful book!) Read more

DANGER: MEMETIC HAZARD. And other warning signs for tomorrow. Via Mixolydian Mode. Read more

OLD SCHOOL: Kiriko Nananan’s Blue. Manga, high school girl with crush on local “bad girl,” read on recommendation from Journalista among others. It’s a very, very well-done example of the “poignant, aching first love at boarding school” gay genre. (Although the school in Blue isn’t actually a boarding school. But you guys know exactly what I mean, yeah?) Breaks no new ground, but is lovely to look at–black and white line drawings so crisp they’re dreamlike, capturing that adolescent state... Read more

WISE CHILDREN: Does biology matter? Ask Rebecca Hamilton, a sperm-donor baby who’s now grown up. She has been searching for her biological father for years. “It’s a very human need to be able to look at a face and say, yes, that’s where I come from,” she says. She thinks the widespread practice of donor anonymity does a huge injustice to the offspring. The first generation of sperm-donor babies can now speak for themselves. And what they are saying raises... Read more

And the air hangs heavy like a blogwatch wine… Balkinization: What the administration won’t say about waterboarding. (There’s a lot of stuff there about the implications of the McCain/Bush compromise for habeas corpus, too, but I haven’t sorted through it yet. Scroll down for that.) Cinecon on Visconti’s Death in Venice, and other DIVa-ish thoughts. YouTube in the womb. (Via Amy Welborn.) Read more

MARC ALMOND’S “DEATH IN VENICE”: I thought a bit more today about why I would so love to hear this imaginary opera. A big part of it is that MA would get the distance Britten sometimes seems to lack–Britten’s opera sways into sentimentality, which Mann’s novella stringently avoids. If anything, MA would probably be too scathing; but I’d prefer that error to the sentimental one. It was then I knew that I’d rather bewith a .22 caliber next to methan... Read more

FOUR LINKS: These are in alphabetical order-ish, which is why the second one seems so out of place. Amy Welborn: …Modern views of St. Francis present him as a nice, if eccentric fellow, presenting us with an alternative lifestyle through which we can clear our lives of bother and make them happier. It is all much harder than that in reality, and in understanding the story of St. Francis, the most important thing is to now how the story ends... Read more

LIVEBLOGGING DEATH IN VENICE: OK, not completely liveblogging, since I went back and edited my impressions before posting. But I watched/listened to the 1981 filmed version of Britten’s DIV opera, and after about half an hour I began to suspect I would get more out of it if I gathered my impressions and asked opera-savvy readers to comment (or dispute). So this is my completely uneducated take; I know I was handicapped by a) loving the novella a lot, b)... Read more