Beautiful
“11 meter-long gypsum megacrystals discovered in caves near Chihuahua, Mexico. The massive crystals were formed over the last 200,000 years due to climate change.” (via)
Radio silence
You know how sometimes you let something slide because you’re so, so busy, and then more and more things happen, so you develop this mental backlog of things you’d like to write about and share, but only when you really have the time to sit and devote to it, and then you keep having more projects pop up that require your absolute attention, and you’re worried that if you spend your time writing blog entries you’ll never get around to the writing-based projects, and by that point you’re just beating yourself up for having let it go so long and you don’t know how to even pick it up again?…..yeah.
My eyes are full
William Gibson always shares the best links on Twitter. Yesterday he posted a link to this gorgeous, intricately illustrated diary of the pilgrimage to Jerusalem undertaken by the German knight (as well as town mayor and architect), Konrad von Grünenberg.
What technique! What perspective!
Is that a faint sea monster (in the best style of fantastic medieval maps and illuminated manuscripts) I spy in the bottom right corner?
View the rest of the illustrated diary here, and browse the blog for the best of the rest. There are so many gorgeous engravings, sketches, paintings and documents I’m not sure where to begin. I have about 20 tabs open right now, just from the thumbnails of recommended posts. I also have a soft spot for 1700s political and social cartoons, medieval illuminations, and anatomical diagrams, so I’m looking forward to probing this treasure trove.
Harvey Milk’s San Francisco
Before our trip to San Francisco, we watched Milk, “a 2008 American biographical film on the life of gay rights activist and politician Harvey Milk, who was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.” Of course I was familiar with San Francisco as a centerpoint of the gay rights movement, and I’d even learned about Harvey Milk before, when reading about the Twinkie defense. But there’s nothing like a well-crafted biopic to entertain and educate.
Harvey Milk set up a camera shop on Castro Street in the early 70’s, and the filmmakers recreated the interior exactly. 575 Castro Street still exists, now as a men’s clothing shop known as “Citizen” — though the interior wall features a mural of Milk with one of his famous quotes.
The film was also valuable in that it provided excellent context for a lot of the assorted city buildings. For example, we frequently went past the opera house while riding the bus; were it not for the film, I wouldn’t have realized the building across from that was the City Hall, where Milk was assassinated.
Food for thought
Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative [or creation] there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too.
All sorts of things occur to help one that would otherwise never have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of incidents and meetings and material assistance which no man would have believed would have come his way.
– W. H. Murray, The Scottish Himalayan Expedition
