I go away for a while and suddenly I've made a liar of myself. What is going on at Your Daily Art that I should be getting so many hits from there? Did Glenn Reynolds blog it? Whatever, it's certainly a wonderful site to be associated with.
You may have noticed a certain sparseness on the blogging front around here lately. I seem to have lost interest in it - again. The problem this time was a lack of readers. I actually saw my hit count go down from the time I started blogging again. I'm not even getting much spam. Hmph. Not much can be done about it, though. I started blogging back when it was still a shiny new toy that hardly anyone had ever heard about. Now there's something like 8 million blogs out there, and more being created every day. It's hard to compete for your attention in that kind of market. It really comes down to writing for the sake of writing. And I'm just not into that right now.
I may turn this into a library blog. There are tons of library blogs out there, and once I start classes in September, I'm going to want to follow them pretty closely. This would be a fine place to do that from. So, if you suddenly see a preponderance of library blog links, you'll know why.
Later.
My son was mystified that I watched the Pope's funeral yesterday. But I couldn't explain the fascination to someone who thinks playing Final Fantasy on the Gamecube is the very best use of his time. I love the minutia, the detail, and the pomp and circumstance of the whole thing. I'm no Catholic, but I had great respect for John Paul II. I think he did a lot for Roman Catholicism and people in general. He just seemed like a cool - albeit conservative - Pope.
One of the things that fascinated me was the number of people who attended the ceremony. The way they were cordoned off in the St.Peter's Square made interesting patterns of black, white, pink and multi-colored. So I spent some time wondering who the guys in white and who the guys in pink were. I figured the very black mass of people was made up of priest and nuns. And there was a mass of really important people in the front. 3 US Presidents and Condi Rice were there, as well as a bunch of Kings, Queens, Princes and Prime Ministers. They took up a lot of space.
Then there were the vestments. The FOX news channel commentary on the ceremony was horribly lacking until I found it on the Catholic cable channel EWTN. Finally, an archbishop confirmed my theory that the guys in pinks vestments were archbishops. And he explained that the cardinals wearing the extra fancy vestments were Eastern Rite Catholics.
But the most fascinating thing to me, who spent a lot of time studying high church art and the Council of Trent, was that so much of what they were doing - and will do come April 18 - is steeped in traditions going back almost 2000 years. That is just very cool.
I spend way too much time on Blogshares, but I find all sort of interesting blogs. Do you have any idea how many blogs about knitting there are? It boggles the mind. Here are some new discoveries that aren't necessarily about knitting.
Don't Know Much About Art History - as the title suggests, there's not a lot of art history here, but I think she teaches it, and has interesting things to say about teaching and life in general.
Anna L. Conti is a realist painter from San Francisco. A feast for the eyes, especially her "New Paintings" section.
Teaswap is actually a group of people who do just that - swap teas. But they have interesting tidbits of tea information. I am now planning on buying Celestial Seasonings English Toffee Dessert Tea on their recommendation. I'm a big tea drinker.
I'm sure I'll have more later.
As a follow up to this article from several weeks ago, we now have the perfect blend of dogs, poker, and quilting. See this lovely quilt (scroll down, her archives are all on one page). She says her dad likes dogs and poker, so I figure he must be a great American. Thanks Dioramama (via Blogshares).