as big as the ritz

... verse is worse

gary younge

this is the first time i've seen a moving picture of the guardian's current ( and most excellent ) correspondent in america

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/deadlineusa/2008/sep/18/uselections2008.barackobama

all the world's a shallow grave ... or why education can never be as expensive as ignorance

http://lamiradadelmendigo.blogspot.com/2008/09/frmista.html

slurp !!! .... any excuse to include a bit of art in pedants' corner

amateur pedants, genuine lovers of ecclesiastical buildings, and over-educated art historians may have already noted the outline of a familiar building in the background of william hogarth's action-packed vignette of eighteenth century social problems ... do feel free to click on the link ...

http://emotionalblackmailers.blogspot.com/2008/07/back-to-saint-johns-in-bloomsbury.html

these pictures are somewhat gratuitously displayed in celebration of the government's vaguely realistic and constructive attempt to further and to inform the national debate on alcoholism ... if you can stay in focus, do click on the link below before re-filling your glasses. cheers !

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/sep/17/drugsandalcohol.health

an english role model discreetly turns her back on some tawdry french stereotypes

drastic plastic ... christmas lights bypass surgery ... the procedure was successful but the patient had to be re-cycled

two for joy

chartres clocks

pilgrim

in chartres, we met a tough australian who had just walked a huge chunk of the pilgrim's way from the french border to santiago

it was the first time i'd seen all the stamps which the pilgrims collect at each hostel on the route

now she'd come to chartres to study the labyrinth ... and she explained the difference between a medieval church's labyrinth and a maze ... the medieval church labyrinths have a spiritual or symbolic purpose possibly connected to the pilgrimage to jerusalem and they don't have dead ends

unfortunately the origins of their meaning were forgotten by the clergy and many were destroyed

here's an uncredited image downloaded from wikipedia's article on the cathedral at chartres

chartres ... the old post office

any old irons

plusiers des any old irons

piss-ups and breweries, french style

courbet's great studio painting almost restored in the musee d'orsay

http://www.musee-orsay.fr/fr/collections/bienvenue/les-coulisses-dune-exposition.html

chartres

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chartres_Cathedral

more stuff from chartres

NB

IF YOU GO TO CHARTRES ...

... STAY FOR AT LEAST TWO NIGHTS

... AND TAKE SOME GOOD BINOCULARS TO STUDY THE STAINED GLASS NARRATIVES

the best internet guide to the stained glass might well be adrian fletcher's ...

http://www.paradoxplace.com/Photo%20Pages/France/Chartres/Window_Images/Chartres_Windows_07.htm

borrowed image

at the jeu de paume in paris, there is a big exhibition of wonderful photographs by the late richard avedon

i had a lot of delightful surprises and one big surprise

somehow or other, for nearly forty years, this triptych had passed me by ... i had never seen it

in the second room at the jeu de paume, the three prints, each about ten feet square, are displayed higher up the wall than in this picture from the milan show

so coming face to face with some of the "cast" of lou reed's "walk on the wild side" was quite a shock

for some reason that i'm not yet able to rationalize, i was immediately reminded of some of botticelli's great canvases, primavera, venus and mars, ... but of course warhol's factory had nothing to do with idealism ... maybe someone else can figure out the connection for me

any suggestions ?

a discreet little cafe

http://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/visits/services/restaurant.html

not bad ... as cathedrals go