A notable passing

Father Theodore Hesburgh, former long-time president of Notre Dame University, has died at age 97. I took note of him here in 2004. I also owe him for introducing me to Sigrid Undset's magnificent novel Kristin Lavransdatter. I've written about this book often on this blog. You can search the archive at site:www.sciencemusings.com lavransdatter.

Zzzzzz

My daughter Margaret is a senior editor at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, which means I occasionally get a pre-publication copy of a favorite author.  And so it is that I am reading Donald Hall's latest, Essays After Eighty, with a lovely close-up photo of the grizzled old poet on the cover.

Hall, 85, claims he no longer has the mental agility for poetry - that most demanding of the language arts.  His essays however are as quick and lively as ever.  Prose after eighty.

I dabbled in poetry as a young man, but quickly gave it up; even then I knew I lacked the wherewithal.  Now, as I approach eighty, prose too is slipping from my (quaky, Parkinson) grasp.

Some of you have recommended voice-transcription software, but, like Hall, my greatest pleasure in writing is revision.  And so I slip into silence.

I may not have Donald Hall's considerable gifts of poetry and prose, but I increasingly share his octogenarian fondness for naps.

The rock and the tree

A reprise from 2006.

The Arrow-maker

Click to enlarge Anne's Valentine.

Echoes in the Silence

For some time I have been tempted to collect the dozens of commentaries I have posted here over the past decade on works of visual art, which have given interpretive expression to the themes that define this blog. For the first time I am scrolling through the archive, starting in 2004. I'm a little astonished at how many words I have compiled here, more than all my books put together, more than 20 years of Globe columns.

Here's a little essay from 2006, more life support for the blog.

Echo

Another little Leonardo fantasy.

Connections

An echo from the past.

Silence

I hear you, I hear you. And yet I'm drawn into "the Great Silence". But I offer this by way of explanation, a reprise from the past.

Iron woman

Click to enlarge Anne's illumination.