Style icon of the day

I know nothing of Rhoda, Lady Birley. Here she is, photographed  in her garden at Charleston, by Valerie Finnis. When I grow up, this is exactly what I want to look like:

Found, whilst noodling around on the internet, ostensibly doing 'research', at the excellent Finding my Way blog.

Loss of the day

Steve Jobs, who has died at the age of 56.

In 2005, he made a commencement speech at Stanford:

"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."


Quoted in today's Guardian.


Photograph by Robert Galbraith, for Reuters.

Landscape of the day

My hill:

When I say my hill, I do not of course mean this literally. I did not stomp down to the village one day in my boots, point at the peak, and say: 'That hill? I'll take it.' (Imagine if you could just put a hill on your credit card.)

I think of it as mine because it is the thing I see every day from my house. I lift my eyes up to it as I walk the dog. Even when it is obscured by cloud and weather, I know it is there, and it acts as a temporal anchor. When I was young, I could take or leave a hill. Now I move into middle age, I have a Rousseau-like passion for the miracles of the natural world. And a blue hill does feel to me like a bit of a miracle.

Quote of the Day

The advantages found in history seem to be of three kinds, as it amuses the fancy, as it improves the understanding, and as it strengthens virtue. 


David Hume.

Listen of the Day

For a good, chewy, thoughtful listen: Mark Lawson interviews Kenneth Branagh here.

Interesting on about four different levels. The interview covers age, ambition, Northern Ireland, Laurence Olivier, self-awareness, and fame. Many of my favourite subjects.

I had a massive hero-worship on Kenneth Branagh in the late eighties, when he set up the Renaissance Theatre company and was running three Shakespeare plays in rep. I went to see the production of Much Ado three times, I loved it so much. Halfway through As You Like It, the audience was breathless with laughter, which is not something you always see in Shakespeare. Then he married Emma Thompson and became tabloid fodder for a while, and all that rather got forgotten. But it is worth remembering what an extraordinary achievement that was. I still remember those plays, over twenty years later.

I also think his film of Hamlet was a very fine thing. It's worth finding on DVD if you have not seen it.

Apologies, as always, to those of you who cannot get the BBC iPlayer. It is such a miraculous thing that I wish it were available from Kansas City to Kathmandu. But sadly, it is not.

Quote of the Day

This is not especially profound, or inspiring, or thought-provoking. But for some reason, the mental image it conjures up made me laugh. It's from one of my favourite of those tremendous forties women, Hedy Lamarr:


'Many people are target people. Once when Louis B. Mayer insulted me I poured a glass of water over his head. '

See, Louis B? Don't mess with Hedy.

Unexpected treat of the day

I was looking something up about the actresses women of Hollywood in the 1940s. I was googling about for Claudette Colbert and Paulette Goddard and those great glory women. In the process, I stumbled upon this. It is Bette Davis, but Bette Davis as I have never seen her before. Normally she looks slightly tragical, and very done. Here she looks so fresh and modern she might have been snapped yesterday.

My new ambition is to eat an ice cream cone whilst wearing a sailor top and green sunglasses. Green sunglasses. It's almost too much.

Found via classicforever.

Dog of the Day

Shot in retro black and white, so she may look like Hedy Lamarr:

Instruction of the Day

Here is the thing you have been missing all your life: a Finnish instruction video on how to open a door. My favourite line by far: 'always approach the door calmly'. I think that might have been where I have been going wrong, all these long years.

I know one should not generalise about an entire country, but really, those crazy Finns, I love them.









Via The Daily What.

Listen of the Day

For those of you who can get the BBC iPlayer, click here for an excellent programme on capitalism, presented by Michael Portillo. Sounds dull and worthy, doesn't it? It turns out that it was so interesting, my ears almost fell off.

It's also a fascinating example of how people change. Remember when Michael Portillo seemed like the worst caricature of savage free-market Conservative, all red in tooth and claw? Now he is one of the most thoughtful and measured observers of modern politics. He is still a Conservative, but I would say of the One Nation Peelite tendency. It also turns out that he is very, very good at radio.

Gentleman of the Day.

Talk about both beautiful and useful. I'm afraid I cannot resist the allure of capital letters: I LOVE THIS MAN.



How to Peel a Head of Garlic in Less Than 10 Seconds from SAVEUR.com on Vimeo.


There are several things I would like to say about this. One: some lovely person took the time to shoot this simple video so that it looks ravishing. Observe the care taken over the lighting and the colours and the focus.

Two: they even bothered to put wonderful music over it.

Three: I have always, always wanted to know how to peel garlic quickly and easily, and, in forty-four years, have never caught the trick of it.

Four: at the bit at the end, when the gentleman opens the bowls and reveals the cloves, my mouth actually fell open in amazement, and I yelled No out loud into my office. The dog was astonished.


And, if it were not for the excellent blogger, Hey Lady Grey, I would never, ever have know about it. My life is, even so very slightly, transformed.

Dog of the Day

Well, a day is not a day without a look at this face:

Video of the day

This is of a 29-year-old woman called Sloan Churman, who has been deaf since birth. She has had a hearing aid implanted in her ear. This was the moment it was switched on.






I almost titled this post: The things I should never take for granted. Just now, I can hear birdsong outside my window. Normally, in the middle of a working day, I would not especially notice. After watching this, I notice.

Quote of the Day

'I wept not, so to stone within I grew.'

Dante.

Portrait by Botticelli.

Extraordinary thing of the day

I want to say, in the manner of Rolf Harris: can you guess what it is yet?

I certainly could not.

It is: Mars.

Here is what the NASA website has to say about this glorious picture:

'Part of Mars is defrosting. Around the South Pole of Mars, toward the end of every Martian summer, the warm weather causes a section of the vast carbon-dioxide ice cap to evaporate. Pits begin to appear and expand where the carbon dioxide dry ice sublimates directly into gas. These ice sheet pits may appear to be lined with gold, but the precise composition of the dust that highlights the pit walls actually remains unknown. The camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured the above image in late July.

In the next few months, as Mars continues its journey around the sun, colder seasons will prevail, and the thin air will turn chilly enough not only to stop the defrosting, but once again freeze out more layers of solid carbon dioxide.'

I've been thinking lately about finding beauty in unexpected places. One of the very last places I would have ever expected was the red planet, which I conceived of as a hellish miasma of gas and dust and death. Instead, there is this cool, restrained loveliness. I feel there is some kind of parable in there somewhere, although I'm not quite sure what it is.

Found via the always interesting Minnesotastan.

Face of the Day: Myrna Loy

Apparently, in the 1930s, addressing a bunch of studio heads in Hollywood, she asked:

'Why does every black person have to be a servant? How about a black person walking up the steps of a courthouse carrying a briefcase?'

Quoted by Philip French in The Guardian.

Song of the day

My friend the Playwright sent this right over to help me deal with deadline fever. It's quite hard to stay in the Monday doldrums when a handsome man is singing that Broadway is 'not just for gays any more'. Watch out for the lovely sailors. There's something about a sailor suit.

Blog post of the day

There is a startling new post up on the excellent site, Sociological Images. It is clever and funny and angry and shocking and a little bit sad. It's long, but it's so brilliant it's worth reading to the end. You can find it here.

There isn't really a picture to go with it, but it mentions Morgan Freeman, so that gives me a perfect excuse to put up a snapshot of his smiling face.

Monday Dog

I am very, very Monday morning-ish. Even though it is now Monday afternoon. I have work to do and annoying emails to reply to and letters to write and the sky is the colour of old washing and the wind is blowing at seventy miles an hour and I am grumpy and cross and want to go and hide in a hole. I imagine that there are other people suffering the same Monday crash. So I give you dog beauty, which is the least I can do on a dark day. Because look, look:

Lovely boys

I adore these charming singing boys. I don't want to sound patronising, but there is something amazingly charming about a pop fellow who is brave enough to wear a woolly jumper whilst singing at Glastonbury. Anyway, I love this song:

Funny story of the day

Found this via a Facebook page called I love to Laugh. Apologies for the rather imperfect reproduction:

Surprise of the Day

This morning, the Prime Minister hymned the praise of British inventors:

'We are brilliant inventors in this country...We invented the jet engine, DNA, the World Wide Web.'

The naughty Twitterati are having an awful lot of fun with the idea that DNA was a British invention.
'Makes me so proud,' wrote one. Of course one knows what the PM meant: the discovery of the double helix by Watson and Crick, using data produced by the overlooked woman of DNA, Rosalind Franklin:

Still, in the spirit of whimsy, now every time DNA is mentioned, I shall hear the strains of Land of Hope and Glory fire up in my head. Because it was invented by Ordinary Decent Britons. Hurrah.

Discovery of the Day

Sometimes I almost panic about all the things I do not know. One of the delightful things about the internet is that it contains almost all the knowledge in the world. It is like the great library at Alexandria. One of its most potent joys is that it allows you to stumble upon things that you would never otherwise find. It obeys the Donald Rumsfeld maxim: there the the things we do not know we do not know. (I remember scoffing at this mightily at the time. Now I think it is a profound universal truth. Just because I do not agree with his politics does not mean I cannot admit that the man sometimes said something that was true.)

This morning, I was looking up something on Lartigue, one of my three favourite photographers in the world. In the process of the search, I found a beautiful set of black and white photographs I had never seen before. They were taken by a woman called Lillian Bassman. She has a great talent, and a fascinating life. I was struck by the fact that she was married to her husband for seventy-seven years. 'He never bored me,' she said. I love that. She was born in 1917, and is still living in New York City.

There is an excellent New York Times article about her here.

Can't believe I have not done this already

No blog of mine is complete without obligatory dog photographs. (Those of you who kindly read the Backwards in High Heels blog will know this to your cost.) It is obviously a subjective love thing. But it is also an objective beauty thing, as you may see here:

Jolly Gentleman of the Day

I'm not entirely sure about this lady's hair. (That horned look is always a little doubtful, in my book.) But I do like the bouncing fellow.

From Marie Claire, Australia; found via the always lovely Dustjacket Attic.

Photograph of the Day

The wonderful hunting cheetahs, by Peter Beard, taken in 1960. Those swinging sixties cheetahs really were wild.

If you have a spare thirty grand, you can go down to Christie's on November 2nd and bid for it. 

Thirty grand. The world of photography knows no new austerity.

Favourite blog post of the day

The marvellous How to be a Retronaut never lets me down. He recently posted a haunting series of photographs of the abandoned city of Pripyat, in Russia. There is a terrible, mournful beauty to them.

You can see them here.

Video of the Day

REM are splitting up. Sometimes I forget how damn good they were. This is to remind me.

Lee Miller by George Hoyningen Huene

In a small sputter of internet coincidence, I was reminded of this photograph today. It has been one of my favourites ever since I first saw it, when I was twenty-seven, and I had never even heard of George Hoyningen-Huene. I think I barely knew of Lee Miller. Once I did know all about her, the photograph took on a profound sadness, because that sheer, sleek girl in the picture saw things no human eye should ever have to see. In 1945, she was the one of the first photographers to go into Dachau.

Quote of the Day

 

'Certainly, the art of writing is the most miraculous of all things man has devised.'

Thomas Carlyle.

 

He also said: 'Teach a parrot the terms 'supply and demand' and you've got an economist', which is very naughty, and sounds as if it could have been said yesterday.