Katherine Keenum

As we go into a stormy weekend, I'm posting this gentle illustration by Garth Williams from Little House in the Big Woods simply because I love it.

 Read More 

We had to put our beloved Corgi down in November, but we have left his outdoor water dish for the birds and chipmunks who visit it from time to time. I hasten to add that our Palmer slept in OUR house, not a doghouse. All the same this picture made me smile wistfully. As for the artist, I can find little about Elisabeth Sinding (1846–1930) except that she was a Norwegian who studied in Christiana (now Oslo), Dresden, and Munich. No thought, no suggestion: sometimes a picture is enough.

Blog post alert: In A question, Jackie Morris recounts being caught by surprise when asked, "What brings you  joy?" All of her answers are worth reading (do click on the link), but I've selected one to imitate. She and a friend collaborated on the bracelet shown here. It embodies her chant/charm/poem: "full moon, owl flight, stone speaks, witch light."

 Read More 

With a horrible political year ahead, let's go out of December 2023 in style. Happy New Year's EVE everybody!

At first glance, I thought this image depicted a slightly surreal, imaginary place. Scrolling down through additional images at the Lines and Colors post on Alesandro Tofanelli increased that impression until I caught on, no!, they are probably real! Tiny places like the Thimble Islands off the Connecticut coast. Each one might prompt a story about a small isolated place and the peculiar outlook of either the artist who depicted it or the person who chose to inhabit it. Or, of course, indeed a story about an imaginary tiny floating world.

Last night's Christmas full moon sent me this morning to Jack Morris's account of the working holiday during which she painted this visionary design. On the Second Day of Christmas, let your imagination roam free!

I have just reread Polly Redford's wonderful, quirky novel, The Christmas Bower. It is classified by libraries as children's literature, but the protagonist, Noah, is the only child in the book. Can anyone think of another children's book in which most of the characters are adult?

Two titles on a bookstore's web page for 2023 Christmas murder mysteries sent me to the public library. I had read S. J. Bennett's Windsor Knot, the first in her series about Queen Elizabeth II as a detective and enjoyed it enough to borrow Murder Most Royal as light Christmastime reading. My conclusion: not enough Corgis, but thumbs up to a mildly amusing visit to Sandringham for the holidays. For an interview with the author, click here.

 Read More 

Imagine a group of internationally known, avant-garde artists building an amusement park together in 1987—attractions by Salvador Dali, David Hockney, Michael Basquiat, Roy Lichtenstein (with music by Philip Glass, no less). An over the Big Top extravaganza. So delicious! So Tom Stoppard! So It-couldn't-happen now! Only wait: it can happen now, at least Luna Luna is being revived; and one day next year, you may be able to visit it in a city near you.

 Read More 

More hands from Renaissance Painting & Drawing Techniques. A story I am working on now involves a printer and bookseller in an imaginary Renaissance world. The company prints textbooks on cheap paper if a print run will make a profit. For less-used titles, students borrow fascicles of approved exemplars to copy by hand. I'm always interested in concrete, material details of life in my fictional settings, whether they make it into the story or not.
 Read More