I was walking through The West Wing of the Norton Simon Museum and nearly screamed when I saw this painting of Cliff at Étretat, the Port d’Aval (1869) by Gustave Courbet.
I couldn’t help but remember the Noël episode of the television series The West Wing (S2 E10) and Bernard’s flat delivery:
This is a painting of the cliffs of Étretat, cleverly entitled “The Cliffs of Étretat”.
The museum wall card for the seascape oil painting
That episode described a similar painting by a minor (fictitious) painter Gustave Callioux who was apparently influenced by Courbet. The plot was likely art imitating real life as Courbet’s painting was apparently stolen by the Nazis.
Perhaps the show’s reference was also a snipe at the Canadian children’s television show Caillou? One also has to wonder at the similarities of the name Cliff Calley who pops ups up in the show’s “Ways and Means” episode (S3, E3).
Welcome to This Is Altadena, a podcast hosted by the Altadena Libraries, celebrating people’s life experiences and stories, and the hidden histories of Altadena, California. In our inaugural episode, we look at the life and times of Altadena legend, artist Charles White. Library staffer Chloe Cavelier sat down with community members Veronica Jones, Keni Arts, and Eugene Hutchins for 3 in-depth conversations about Charles White, his art and legacy, and his ties to our thriving local art community. Then later, our own Aaron Kimbrell chats with resident Teen Librarian Isabelle Briggs about the amazing programs and services offered in the teen department here at the Altadena Library District. For more about Charles White, don't hesitate to reach out to the Altadena Library: https://www.altadenalibrary.org For more about Keni Arts, visit his website: https://keniarts.com
This podcast is simply awesome! It makes me proud to be a resident of Altadena, CA. Can’t wait to see what they continue to come up with.
Old Book Illustrations offers a wide range of public domain, royalty-free images scanned from old books. Searchable galleries include animals, plants, techniques, artists names, books titles, and much more...
I wish the indieweb had more content that wasn’t about the indieweb
— simulacrum party (@simulacrumparty) December 19, 2020
The hard part of making cool websites isn’t the tech, it’s the content! Of course I fall into the trap of writing a new ssg every six months as well because it’s easier and safer than writing or drawing or playing music or something interesting and exciting
— simulacrum party (@simulacrumparty) December 19, 2020
If possible, attempt to read the word “content” in these posts without the unsavory connotations with which the last couple of years have saddled that word
— simulacrum party (@simulacrumparty) December 19, 2020
The point of having a website is putting something interesting on it right?
The IndieWeb wiki does tend toward the technical, but many of us are working toward remedying that. For those who haven’t found them yet, there are some pages around a variety of topics like poetry, crafts, hobbies, music, writing, journalism, education, and a variety of other businesses and use cases. How we don’t have one on art (yet) is beyond me… Hopefully these might help us begin to use our sites instead of incessantly building them, though this can be a happy hobby if you enjoy it.
I have come to suspect that slowly redesigning your website (forever) provides almost exactly the same kind of light absorption & calm satisfaction as knitting or embroidery
— Robin Sloan (@robinsloan) December 13, 2020
If you’ve got an IndieWeb friendly site, why not use it to interact with others? Help aggregate people around other things in which you’re interested. One might interact with the micro.blog community around any of their tagmoji. (I’m personally hoping there will be one for the stationery, pen, and typewriter crowd.) One might also find some community on any of the various stubs (or by creating new stubs) on IndieWeb.xyz.
For more practical advice and to borrow a proverbial page from the movie Finding Forrester, perhaps reading others’ words and borrowing or replying to them may also help you along. I find that starting and ending everything from my own website means that I’m never at a loss for content to consume or create. Just start a conversation, even if it’s just with yourself. This started out as a short reply, but grew into a longer post aggregating various ideas I’ve had banging around my head this month.
Rachel Syme recently made me think about “old school blogs”, and as interesting as her question was, I would recommend against getting stuck in that framing which can be a trap that limits your creativity. It’s your site, do what you want with it. Don’t make it a single topic. That will make it feel like work to use it.
If you started a niche blog (and I mean old school geocities/Wordpress/blogger blog, not a newsletter) right now, what would it be about? Don’t overthink it.
— rachel syme (@rachsyme) December 8, 2020
The ever-wise Charlie Owen reminds of this and suggests a solution for others reading our content.
Having said that, I’m gonna update my website soon two that you can filter the RSS feed by tag, eliminating shit you don’t wanna see.
I can do that because I own my website, unlike on this hellhole where we’re beholden to twitters awfulness. #indieweb
— Charlie Don’t Surf (@sonniesedge) December 19, 2020
Of course if building websites is your passion and you want to make a new one on a new platform every week, that’s cool too. Perhaps you could document the continuing refreshing of the process each time and that could be your content?
A series of 3D-printed objects, starting by printing the iconic Utah Teapot, scanning the print, and printing the scan, iterating as the object degrades.
Thi...
This poses an interesting question about copies of intellectual property. When does it become something else or someone else’s?
The barrage against https://t.co/GwoLbMUTzb continues into its 96th day. The cyberwarfare taking place under the hood is unlike anything we've seen in human history, rivaled only by the besieging of https://t.co/pwn6ZYEwS3 in 2016. Thread incoming! 1/
The Child Ballads are 305 traditional ballads from England and Scotland, and their American variants, anthologized by Francis James Child during the second half of the 19th century. Their lyrics and Child's studies of them were published as The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. The tunes of most of the ballads were collected and published by Bertrand Harris Bronson in and around the 1960s.
Burl Ives’s 1949 album, The Return of the Wayfaring Stranger, for example, includes two: “Lord Randall” and “The Divil and the Farmer”. ❧
Annotated on August 04, 2020 at 08:59AM
In 1956 four albums (consisting of eight LPs) of 72 Child Ballads sung by Ewan MacColl and A.L. Lloyd were released: The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, Vols. 1–4. ❧
Annotated on August 04, 2020 at 09:05AM
Illustration by Arthur Rackham of Child Ballad 26, “The Twa Corbies” ❧
Annotated on August 04, 2020 at 09:06AM
Joan Baez sang ten Child ballads distributed among her first five albums, the liner notes of which identified them as such. ❧
Celtic instruments come to life in this lecture. Take a music lesson and learn about the carnyx, a war trumpet; the bodhrán, a hand drum; and the crwth, a lyre played with a bow. Treat your ears to samples of these and beautiful Irish singing, then watch clips of delightful Celtic dances based on classic traditions.
Our archaeological art takes its inspiration from artefacts found in Orkney. Each one is a unique piece, made by archaeologist Chris Gee.
In the long summer evenings, when it hardly gets dark at all here in Orkney, you will often find Chris in his garden overlooking the archipelago, where he is chipping away at another stone. He finds delight in recreating Stone Age art using their tools and methods. And like them, he carefully selects local stone, with beautiful colours and patterns. In this way, he makes Neolithic ceremonial maces, stone axes, carved stone balls, enigmatic carved stone objects, and beautifully patterned sandstone which he sometimes colours with hematite and other natural dyes. It is awe-inspiring to think that his hands are recreating the same movements that someone right here in Orkney did more than five thousand years ago.
fluffy
