• Holy Week – Jesus in Art

    Holy Week – Jesus in Art

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    In recent years, I’ve come across some striking portrayals of Jesus and amassed a small collection. My favorite visual rendition of Christ is the faceless one in the movie Ben-Hur (1959), but these paintings achieve a similar effect of reverent mystery, at least to my mind. First, one I have shared before by Ivan Kramskoi.…

  • Better than The Great Gatsby? – A Review of Passing by Nella Larsen

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    In this book review, I go over some themes and characters from the lesser-known novella Passing. It’s a classic of the Harlem Renaissance and American literature at large, and I was not disappointed.

  • Reading Reverie

    Reading Reverie

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    It is starting to feel like spring where I live. Just barely. Mornings are still cold (and dark, thanks to daylight savings), and I’m still wearing sweaters. But the sun comes out in the afternoon, and I think the snow is over for the season (!). The crocuses photo is from Pixabay—I have not seen…

  • Musings and Memories from “The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes”

    Musings and Memories from “The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes”

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    This review contains spoilers I remember the first time I finished The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. I was somewhere between 8 and 10 years old, curled up in a mustard-colored barrel chair we had got second hand from somewhere, in the family room when it still had the ugly gray carpet (complete with cigarette burns…