Janie Harrington 🌸🐉🦉🌿

‘He couldn’t be happier’: celebrating William Eggleston’s incredible photography — The Guardian A new exhibition brings together new dye-transfer prints of the classically American photographer’s work

“Eggleston’s photos tend to feel decontextualized. They do not have titles or captions and he is hostile to interpretation. “Words and pictures are like two different animals,” he told the New York Times in 2016. “They don’t particularly like each other.”

apple.news/AVsfawQY_R2W...

Anna Ancher.

Young Woman Arranging Flowers.

C 1885.

Leonor Fini.

L'amour sans condition.

1958.

Well, I love beans and rice.

I love beans and rice. I also just love beans and cornbread. I am a southerner. We eat lot of red beans and rise with sausage. They could just substitute some ground beef. Laughing. One shouldn't eat red meat every day.

My old copy fell to pieces so I bought a new one. For some reason, I just love this book. Maybe it was the title at first. Harold Bloom and I just get along well together. Sure I'd rather sit down with Camus and talk for hours, but this is the next best thing.

Gift of Mrs. Van S. Merle-Smith, 1953

Shawl
https://botfrens.com/collections/223/contents/102540

A cury-haired, bearded William Morris

Millais, palette and paintbrush poised

A rather stout and melancholic Rossetti

The Artists Rifles (no apostrophe!) was established #OnThisDay 1860. Do you recognise three of the founding members? If not, see victorianweb.org/history/army... — don't cheat by looking at the alt text!

The Vase of Tulips
c. 1890

Paul Cézanne
French

Art Institute of Chicago

Hillary Clinton is an incredible human being and Nancy Mace is a terrible person.

Beans and rice should be next.

I so hope that one of those The Woman’s Journal tote bags survives in a museum somewhere.

William York Macgregor is remembered as one of the leading figures of the Glasgow Boys and co-founder of 'The Glasgow School' with his schoolfriend, the artist James Paterson. 'The Vegetable Stall,' (1884) is considered to be Macgregor's masterpiece.

The Victorian critic and artist John Ruskin believed all beauty comes from nature. Look closely at his painting of a Bleinheim Orange apple (1873), and you'll see how Ruskin's lighting and shadow animate and dramatise a simple object.

Stained glass artwork featuring a running hare facing right in a crescent frame with floral border

English stained glass artist Tamsin Abbott, who is inspired by folklore and nature #WomensArt
#March1st #Spring

Butterfly Conservation's butterflies and moths to see in March: Red Admiral, Orange Underwing, Peacock, Oak Beauty, Brimstone, Dotted Border, Comma, Early Thorn, Small Tortoiseshell

Spring is on its way! Look out for these butterflies and moths in your gardens and local green spaces 🦋🌷

What have you seen recently?

Big Bill, the Greenfinch
#BirdoftheDay #Finches

Wood Anemones were responding to the early March sunshine in many Dorset Hazel coppices today.
Just wonderful.
#Dorset #Spring #Nature
@bsbibotany.bsky.social

Grey wolf

So many Peacocks basking at Prawle Point - some of the rocks were really hot to the touch.
The concrete of the S-facing WW11 coastal defence structures was particularly capturing the solar heat & I felt sure there was going to be a basking Adder somewhere.
But it was not to be - them's the breaks.

The first Stitchwort of spring in a South Hams lane.
I noticed a small insect on the adjacent leaf....?

There are many people who simply do not understand the stakes and either understate or overstate them. The issue is not that AI will replace writers or w/e: it can't. The issue is that AI will make our working conditions significantly worse and harm the development of new artists in our fields.

The Sea Monster
by Theodor Severin Kittelsen (1881)
#BookologyThursday

"Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member, Members of the Committee... as a former Senator, I have respect for legislative oversight and I expect its exercise, as do the American people, to be principled and fearless in pursuit of truth and accountability. As we all know, however, too often Congressional investigations are partisan political theater, which is an abdication of duty and an insult to the American people. The Committee justified its subpoena to me based on its assumption that I have information regarding the investigations into the criminal activities of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. Let me be as clear as I can. I do not. As I stated in my sworn declaration on January 13, I had no idea about their criminal activities. I do not recall ever encountering Mr. Epstein. I never flew on his plane or visited his island, homes or offices. I have nothing to add to that. Like every decent person, I have been horrified by what we have learned about their crimes. It's unfathomable that Mr. Epstein initially got a slap on the wrist in 2008, which allowed him to continue his predatory practices for another decade. Mr. Chairman, your investigation is supposed to be assessing the federal government's handling of the investigations and prosecutions of Epstein and his crimes. You subpoenaed eight law enforcement officials, all of whom ran the Department of Justice or directed the FBI when Epstein's crimes were investigated and prosecuted. Of those eight, only one appeared before the Committee. Five of the six former attorneys general were allowed to submit brief statements stating they had no information to provide. You have held zero public hearings, refused to allow the media to attend them, including today, despite espousing the need for transparency on dozens of occasions. You have made little effort to call the people who show up most prominently in the Epstein files. And when you did, not a single Republican Member showed up for Les Wexner's deposition. This institutio…

as the public who also want to get to the bottom of this matter. My heart breaks for the survivors. And I am furious on their behalf. I have spent my life advocating for women and girls. I have worked hard to stop the terrible abuses so many women and girls face here and around the world, including human trafficking, forced labor, and sexual slavery. For too long, these have been largely invisible crimes or not treated as crimes at all. But the survivors are real and they are entitled to better. In Southeast Asia, I met girls as young as twelve years old who were forced into prostitution and raped repeatedly. Some were dying of AIDS. In Eastern Europe, I met mothers who told me how they lost daughters to trafficking and did not know where to turn. In settings around the world, I met survivors trying to rebuild their lives and help rescue others - with little support from people in power, who too often turned a blind eye and a cold shoulder. If you are new to this issue, let me tell you: Jeffrey Epstein was a heinous individual, but he's far from alone. This is not a one-off tabloid sensation or a political scandal. It's a global scourge with an unimaginable human toll. My work combatting sex trafficking goes back to my days as First Lady. I worked to pass the first federal legislation against trafficking and was proud that my husband signed the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, which increased support for survivors and gave prosecutors better tools for going after traffickers. As Secretary of State, I appointed a former federal prosecutor, Lou CdeBaca, to ramp up our global antitrafficking efforts. I oversaw nearly 170 anti-trafficking programs in 70 nations and directly pressed foreign leaders to crack down on trafficking networks in their countries. Every year we published a global report to shine a light on abuses. The findings of those reports triggered sanctions on countries failing to make progress, so they became a powerful diplomatic tool to drive concrete…

Infuriatingly, the Trump Administration gutted the Trafficking in Persons Office at the State Department, cutting more than 70 percent of the career civil and foreign service experts who worked so hard to prevent trafficking crimes. The annual trafficking report, required by law, was delayed for months. The message from the Trump Administration to the American people and the world could not be clearer: combatting human trafficking is no longer an American priority under the Trump White House. That is a tragedy. It's a scandal. It deserves vigorous investigation and oversight. A committee endeavoring to stopping human trafficking would seek to understand what specific steps are needed to fix a system that allowed Epstein to get away with his crimes in 2008. A committee run by elected officials with a commitment to transparency would ensure the full release of all the files. It would ensure that the lawful redactions of those files protected the victims and survivors, not powerful men and political allies. It would get to the bottom of reports that DOJ withheld FBI interviews in which a survivor accuses President Trump of heinous crimes. It would subpoena anyone who asked on which night there would be the "wildest party" on Epstein's island. It would demand testimony from prosecutors in Florida and New York about why they gave Epstein a sweetheart deal and chose not to pursue others who may have been implicated. It would demand that Secretary Rubio and Attorney General Bondi testify about why this administration is abandoning survivors and playing into the hands of traffickers. It would seek out officers on the front lines of this fight and ask them what support they need. It would put forth legislation to provide more resources and force this administration to act. But that's not happening.

Instead, you have compelled me to testify, fully aware that I have no knowledge that would assist your investigation, in order to distract attention from President Trump's actions and to cover them up despite legitimate calls for answers. If this Committee is serious about learning the truth about Epstein's trafficking crimes, it would not rely on press gaggles to get answers from our current president on his involvement; it would ask him directly under oath about the tens of thousands of times he shows up in the Epstein files. If the majority was serious, it would not waste time on fishing expeditions. There is too much that needs to be done. What is being held back? Who is being protected? And why the cover-up? My challenge to you, Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee, is the same challenge I put to myself throughout my long service to this nation. How to be worthy of the trust the American people have given you. They expect statesmanship, not gamesmanship. Leading, not grandstanding. They expect you to use your power to get to the truth and to do more to help survivors of Epstein's crimes as well as the millions more who are victims of sex trafficking."

Here is Hillary Clinton’s opening statement to House Oversight on Epstein.

Clinton says she does not recall ever encountering Epstein and says she knew nothing about his crimes.

She also says that Trump should testify under oath and criticizes the committee for not holding any public hearings.

New acquisition. Edward Lear had many sides to him. Another person with whom I’d love to share some tea and conversation. #EdwardLear #Nature #19c

Covers of 12 books from between the stated date range including the four seasons books, ‘the night sky’ and ‘the weather’

Cover stories.
Ladybird Nature series
(1959 - 1966)

Hedera helix, Common Ivy. Phenomenal harvest. Untouched as yet by the thrushes and blackbirds.
#WildflowerHour

She earned her doctorate in philosophy of science at Princeton. Goldstein’s fiction gives her the chance to, as she put it, “insert ‘real life’ intimately into the intellectual struggle.” Her nonfiction explores the tension between religion and reason, secular human- ism, and atheism. Goldstein is now considered one of the new, new atheists, a movement characterized as more inclusive and less polemic.

An undated, color photo of philosopher and writer Rebecca Goldstein Image source: Rebecca Goldstein website

“The only object each of us can truly possess is our own mind."
-American philosopher and author Rebecca Goldstein, born on this day in 1950
#WriterSky #BookSky #BOTD

Thomas Pynchon Saw American Fascism Coming The elusive author of paranoid, absurdist novels looks more and more prescient these days.

Yep.

#pynchon #writers #books #booksky #fascism

What Not Reading Does to Your Writing More thoughts on "TV brain prose" and why reading is, yes, useful for your writing.

Since everyone is (sigh) debating if writers benefit from reading books, I dissected a passage shared as “evidence” that non-readers can write great prose: countercraft.substack.com/p/what-not-r...