inimical, a.

an adjective; from the OED, SECOND EDITION 1989:

1. Having the disposition or temper of an enemy; unfriendly, hostile.
2. Adverse or injurious in tendency or influence; harmful, hurtful.

As in "A refusal to accept the hypocrisies inherent in society marriage, La Maintenon feared was inimical to Christian virtue." - from Athenais: The Life of Louis XIV's Mistress, the Real Queen Of France by Lisa Hilton

The things left standing are the things you need to know.

Jad Abumrad, WNYC Radio Lab®
on Sleep. Listen to the podcast.

"The things left standing are the things you need to know." I am attributing this quote to Jad Abumrad because I recognized it as his voice while listening to radio. Friday's Radio Lab was on Sleep. One of the discussants, Dr. Gulio Tunoni of the Neuroscience Training Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, suggested that sleep is like a cleansing wave that flows over the entire brain, heightening those things that one needs to remember and diminishing those that one does not. An example of this was the process of learning a piece of music: keep at it for hours and nothing; sleep on it and you wake up Mozart (an exaggeration, but nonetheless an important comparison). I have experienced this with reading, writing and editing: sit there for hours and I am re-reading the same sentence for five minutes; sentences I write are convoluted and full of jargon for an academic-friendly appeal. So after about four hours I put it aside and sleep on it. The most important details of the many many pages I have read always, eventually, dependably remain on the surface. My writing is clear, my head is clear. All of the missteps, concerns and worries fade, are washed away and when I wake up in the morning, "the things left standing are the things you need to know."

Tecamachalco mission church ceiling

Tecamachalco roof, originally uploaded by Rageforst..

This is the ceiling of the mission church at Tecamachalco, Mexico. It was painted by Juan Gerson, a 16th c. Amerindian. Each one is prepared on papel de amate, or fig bark paper. The colors, the illustration are marvelous. My favorite is the Noah's ark.

I will post more info on this later...

ALA, The Web Design Survey, 2007

I can't believe it. After almost 10 years of doing this stuff. A List Apart, the Mount Olympia for web designers, has created this wonderful survey to assess who is out making the web beautiful, functional, and usable. ALA has the pull--I see this being THE official survey for our community for a long time.

Little cafe

Little cafe, originally uploaded by nina4176.

Built in 1695, that makes this little house 311 years old! It is now a cafe.
I love this little building. It's amazing that its still standing at 311. This is the type of architecture that was brought over to the American colonies. Dutch colonial. Steep roofed to allow the snow to fall off. Narrow,--I can imagine other buildings being built on either side of it--this is Amsterdam, so space was at a cost. I can't tell if that is brick or not, can't remember. The facade, simple and plain, unassuming was the style of Dutch 17th c. architecture. There is some trace of classicism in the very, very small volutes where the roof meets the side wall. Who knows if any reconstruction, additions, or subtractions were made over time.

My first free weekend...

I began my Saturday with a lovely read through the rest of Sarah Dunant's Birth Marks. Started out very well five months ago and left to myself a bit of a cliffhanger come the start of the semester. The second half was not as interesting which probably makes it a good thing that I put it down when I had. It dragged and dragged and the final pages were painfully boring. It was anticlimactic to the umpteenth power. Oh so. That's all right. At least I got to just lie down and read fiction all day without any care that there is anything else I needed to do. Her Birth of Venus was excellent. For me, she did better with the historical drama than modern crime. But I will still give her other books a chance. They were recommended by a friend of mine so I will see if the rest of the Hannah Wolfe series is up to stuff.

A funny thing happened while writing in class...

I was taking notes in my Global Renissance course when suddenly I felt I had mispelled the word I'd just written. For a milli-milli-millisecond, I expected a red squiggly line to appear on my college-ruled notepad. I am going to investigate this phenomena further...

it's here, the final day is here!!! wooo hoooo!

ahhhhhhhh, nice to get that out. well folks i am officially out of school. i handed in my last paper today--european invasion: art in colonial latin america.

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Oh thank god...

...one of my classes is over. This is not a reflection of the class whatsoever. Great teacher. Learned a lot. I am just SOOOOO happy to have made it through and looking forward to spending time watching TV.

I had a wonderful last-day class. Got to hear all sorts of background stuff from two art historians right in my program. I am glad to hear that there were doubts, swiggles in the road, and shoot-off tangents on their quest. As a Ph.D. student full of doubt about whether or not I know what the hell I'm talking about, I learned that many feel this way. But that's what the learnin' is for! Right?

I'm singin' in the rain! Now off to paper2...

Oh i like this...

easy.