What a relief to spend the last few days in a country that doesn’t have a president named Bush. The cheery Cumbrian men who stopped in to repair a leak in the ceiling listened with patience while we complained about how difficult it is to be an American abroad, and then pointed out that the […]
Prehistory
Giving Voice
Is there some trace of the land’s past still resident? Although songlines are not part of our Western cultural history, the concept of stories preserved in a particular landscape has a powerful appeal. Here in New England we often joke about the tenacity of our Puritan ancestors whose energy still seems to linger in spite […]
Cave Art Reconsidered
Painted images from Chauvet Cave Horses drawn by Nadia at 3 years, 5 months Nicholas Humphrey, author and expert on the evolution of consciousness, wrote a paper several years ago comparing the cave art at Chauvet Cave with work produced by Nadia, an autistic child who lived in England, who was not able to employ […]
Indra’s Net at 88th and Fifth
Alyson Shotz, The Shape of Space, 2004. Cut plastic Fresnel lens sheets and staples. Highlight from a recent visit to the Guggenheim Museum: In the lobby, the first thing you see is a beguiling wall of light which turns out to be Fresnel lenses stapled together. I sat with and walked around this curtain of […]
Saffron Goddess
Frequent Slow Muse commenter and friend Elatia Harris has written yet another memorable piece on 3 Quarks Daily. Her topic this time: Saffron. And because she is both a writer and an artist, she has woven the history of this delicate spice with an image track of beautiful prehistoric paintings, a few sampled here. Here’s […]