Today’s Sketch is another one from the Seattle Art Museum’s Roman Sculpture exhibit from the Louvre. This one is from a sarcophagus of a poet surrounded by his muses. (regrettably I’m having no luck finding a photo of the original) This was one of my favorites in the exhibit. I think I liked it for it’s simplicity and for the slight abstraction in the figures proportions to fit them into the square shape.
Man, for all my skepticism there are occasional things that are such incredible coincidences that at least makes one want to speculate about the existence of helpful pixies or some such. I’d been looking for a single CD from an audiobook collection. When I’m listening to audiobooks I have a bad tendency to put them into a pile as opposed to putting them back into their container like I should. Because of this several of these audio books can get mixed together or completely mislaid.
Such was the case of disk seven of Terry Pratchett’s “Making Money” read by Stephen Briggs. I had already renewed it to buy myself some time but I was beginning to get the bad feeling I had returned it already in the wrong container. Something, regrettably, I’ve been known to do far too often. I’d been going with my usual strategy i.e. don’t panic and clean, but my options were running out quickly.
While I was organizing my office desk I had just put some books on top of the bookshelf that is right next to a filing cabinet that has my scanner on top of it using my portable office doorbell as a book stand.
Five minutes later I found the doorbell wasn’t quite heavy enough for this task as the books came crashing down into the space between bookshelf and filing cabinet. Swearing to myself I moved the cabinet to retrieve the books and doorbell, preying the fall hadn’t done any damage, and there was the disk.
So the romantic in me is choosing to pretend that mischievous pixies knocked over my books to point me in the right direction. Of course the annoying rationalist is going to just remember to start looking behind the cabinet first.
Just have to brag about the newest addition to my life list, a Red Breasted Sapsucker! I was walking to the University District and I heard the tapping of a woodpecker foraging in the tree I was passing by. I automatically assumed it was a flicker because they are REALLY common in city limits here. But since this was an opportunity to get a close look I stopped. Lo and behold it was not a flicker. I briefly mistook it for a Hairy Woodpecker until I saw the completely red head. Fortunately by a wonderful coincidence the bird had the courtesy of letting me see it two blocks away from the Seattle Audubon so I was able to duck my head in and tell them I saw a woodpecker with a red head. (It’s difficult when the accurate description actually is a hindrance in identification, sort of like trying to identifying a Steller Jay by telling someone you saw a Blue Jay.) So going through the various guides and finding that Red-Headed Woodpeckers don’t get farther west then Michigan, my sighting was identified as a sapsucker. (though they did sound surprised that it’s head was as red as I described)
Today’s sketch is a detail from the David and Goliath segment of Ghiberti‘s Gates of Paradise I did when it was touring in Seattle. I actually saw it in Florence long ago when I was in seventh grade. However at the time I didn’t appreciate it as much as I should have as I had read Agony and the Ecstasy one too many times and had Michelangelo on the brain.
Well this evening I went to University Books‘ presentation of science fiction author John Scalzi who was here plugging his new book, Fuzzy Nation. Along with the usual reading Q & A which included how his agent managed to publish what was essentially his H. Beam Piper fanfic. He had a handful of entertaining treats for the fans at the reading. First was a remarkably convincing puppet version of Little Fuzzy, and second a live performance by musician Molly Lewis of the song Fuzzy Man by Paul & Storm
Update. John Scalzi describes the event far better than me.
Okay this one’s a bit of a stretch, but I have seen it defined it as such, and since I like to throw pop examples into the mix it’ll do. So this week’s Rhapsody is Scene’s from an Italian Restaurant by Billy Joel. Thinking about it I don’t think counting this song as a Rhapsody isn’t too strange. The way it goes all over the place in style to the point it is essentially three songs fused into one I think counts as “irregular in form as much as anything else does. Still it’s one of my favorite Billy Joe songs. I usually like his more experimental pieces the best so it’s great to see one like this be on his top ten list of greatest hits. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=au74rR9lIYQ
