(Roughly) Daily

Swimming Lessons

circa 1910

seen at the 1939 World’s Fair

Many, many more arresting images at Black and WTF.

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As we slip into sepia, we might send ethereal birthday greetings to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; he was born on this date in 1859.  While the Scottish physician and author is, of course, renown as the creator of Sherlock Holmes, Conan Doyle was also a prominent spiritualist, who devoted years of his life (and over 1 million pounds) to supporting belief in the existence of “little people,” or Fairies.

Conan Doyle was deeply moved by the “Cottingley Fairies Photographs,” a series of five pictures taken by Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths, two young cousins who lived in Cottingley, near Bradford in England– indeed, he used them to illustrate a 1920 article in The Strand.  (In the early 1980s, Elsie and Frances finally admitted that the photographs were faked [using cardboard cutouts of fairies copied from a popular children's book of the time], though Frances continued to claim that the fifth and final photograph was genuine.)

The first of the five photographs, taken by Elsie Wright in 1917, shows Frances Griffiths with the alleged fairies.

Your correspondent is off to visit the fairies, and thus out of radio contact for a few days.  Regular service should resume by the beginning of next week…  meantime, readers might amuse themselves, even as they improve themselves, with this informative interview and  this helpful how-to.

Parking at Memorial Stadium, Philadelphia

Alex MacLean trained as an architect and a pilot– education that’s he’s put to powerful use in his career as a photographer, exploring the relationship between the natural and the built environments…

"Daisy docks," Chicago

Interchange, Kansas City

The U.S.- Mexico border

Many more stunning “views from above,” taken all over the world, at MacLean’s web site.

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As we find a comfortable altitude, we might send industrious birthday greetings to prolific novelist Anthony Trollope; he was born on this date in 1815.  Trollope wrote 47 novels, including those in the “Chronicles of Barsetshire” and “Palliser” series (along with short stories and occasional prose).  And he has a successful career as a civil servant; indeed, among his works the best known is surely not any of his books, but the iconic red British mail drop, the “pillar box,” which he invented in his capacity as Postal Surveyor.

 The end of a novel, like the end of a children’s dinner-party, must be made up of sweetmeats and sugar-plums.  (source)

Artist Phyllis Toburen announces that she has “conceptualized a new genre of abstract art”; she calls her work Sculptural Enamel Paintings, delighting in the how her paints “lift off the canvas in planes, simulating how the Earth formed during its various geologic eras”…

Readers can draw their own conclusions as to the tectonic metaphor.  In any case, the photos fascinate.

[TotH to Flavorwire]

UPDATE: from reader DH:

Candidate for LA Country district attorney Trutanich posted YouTube videos that his campaign noted had 700,000+ viewers. LA Times reporters wondered what those numbers really meant, and how easy it is to buy viwers, so posted their own videos of paint drying to see…

As we find the Divine in the details, we might recall that it was on this date in 1989 that the fledgeling Fox Network debuted COPS.  Desperate for new programming, but strapped for cash and in the midst of the WGA strike (which had frozen all scripted drama and comedy), Fox had picked up the reality series (which was cheap and “writer-free”) after all of the (then) major networks had passed.

COPS has gone on to become one of the longest-running series on television, and (after the cancellation of America’s Most Wanted) the longest-running show on Fox.

Click here to hear Inner Circle perform “Bad Boys,” the show’s theme.

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A complement to yesterday’s missive on urbanization:  photographer Adam Ryder‘s series, “The Edge of Light“…

More of this series– and other mesmerizing work– on Adam’s site.

As we meditate on moving boundaries, we might recall that it was on this date in 1954 that Agatha Christie was reported in London newspapers to have said “An archaeologist is the best husband any woman can have: the older she gets, the more interested he is in her.”  (In fact, the remark was attributed to her by her second husband, the archeologist Sir Max Mallowan.  Christie later insisted that she was she was quoting “a witty wife.”)

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Davide Capponi explains:

I have always been in love with photography, but kept my shots for myself and a few people around me.

Then, being the possessor of an iPhone, I was pointed by a friend to Instagram and discovered iPhoneography (or Mobile Photography in a wider sense).

iPhoneography is about shooting and editing your photos only with an iPhone, usually with a Low-Fi sentiment and a creative approach; it is about publishing and sharing your work with other fellow iPhoneographers.

For some reason this made a huge difference to me.

See more of Davide’s work at Rubicorno.

As we limber up our clicking fingers, we might hum an intricately-melodic birthday ditty to Baroque composer, priest, and virtuoso violinist Antonio Lucio Vivaldi; “the Red Priest” (so called because of his red hair) was born on this date in 1678.

Click here to hear an excerpt from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons ”Winter” in MP3 format; here to access it in OGG.

 source