My dear friend Wesley Hill has written a lovely brief book about Easter.
[In the seventeenth century] John Aubrey, the first person to make a serious study of stone circles, put his finger on the problem: ‘These Antiquities are so exceeding old that no Bookes doe reach them.’ He developed a more effective method. Using measurements and comparative surveys of different circles with notes ‘writt upon the spott’, he was able to work out that megalithic monuments were of distinct types and that they predated the Romans, Saxons and Danes. He thus, almost single-handedly, created the concept of prehistory and invented field archaeology.
Re: Oliver Burkeman’s 70% rule — “If you’re roughly 70% happy with a piece of writing you’ve produced, you should publish it. If you’re 70% satisfied with a product you’ve created, launch it” etc. — nothing could be more alien to how my mind works than the quantification of mixed feelings.
Hey kids! Let’s play Uranium Rush! Don’t forget the Geiger counter!
Next month I’ll be leading a retreat at Laity Lodge where the artist-in-residence will be Dana Tanamachi. Her “book covers” that illustrate Michiko Kakutani’s Ex Libris are just wonderful. And she did an illuminated Bible! — which I have a copy of and really love. It’ll be an honor to work with her.
Over at my big blog, I wrote a couple of Kane-related posts: one on an interesting audio technique, and one on what Mank did and didn’t do.