separated at birth: Mrs Bates of Aragon

I haven't had one of those "who IS that actress?" moments recently. Somehow, I have not watched the original 1999-2000 UK version of Queer As Folk, to say nothing of the US version or the later remakes. But Jacob Tierney mentioned it as a precedent at the GLAAD Media Awards where Heated Rivalry won the new series award. Anyhow, as I watched Queer As Folk, the face of the actress -- it was her eyes -- that played Marie Threepwood/Marie Jones (the mother of one of the protagonists) was so familiar. The name popped out from the credits because I remember that name -- Maria Doyle Kennedy -- from Downton Abbey and somewhere else. She also played Catherine of Aragon in The Tudors. She rather looks like the actress that played Miss Baxter in Downton Abbey. Her filmography in IMDb is extensive but Maria Doyle Kennedy has always got that penetrating look.

sentence of the day: benevolent autocrat, with taste

"In a world of autocracies, may we have one benevolent autocrat with taste?" -- Reinier de Graaf, architect with OMA, in an open letter to Prime Minister Edi Rama of Albania, quoted in an article in the Guardian entitled "'Starchitects go home': what's the truth behind Albania's astonishing building boom?" by Oliver Wainwright. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2026/oct/02/starchitects-go-home-albania-building-boom-edi-rama 

By the way, I've read a few books by Reinier de Graaf, and recommend them.

sentence of the day: racist tropes

"For instance, Trump’s lie about millions of undocumented immigrants voting illegally is a moth-eaten cloak he pulled from America’s closet of racist tropes." -- Ron Charles, in a review of Stealing elections, American style, by David F. Walbert (Bloomsbury), on his podcast for September 18, 2026

what's in a name?

Renaming has been much in the news of late. Think Lake Ontario or the Kennedy Center. It sometimes feels like it is a new phenomenon but of course it's not so much new as overused (abused) at the moment. People have renamed things for all sorts of reasons. Still, I was amused by this description (warning: spoiler alert if you haven't done today's Artle but plan to) of one of the paintings in today's Artle from the National Gallery of Art (formerly Corcoran collection).

Bierstadt first exhibited the painting as Mountain Lake but changed the title to entice Washington, DC, collector William Wilson Corcoran. The artist even supplied a map showing the supposed location of Mount Corcoran. The flattery worked. Corcoran purchased the painting, his first by Bierstadt, in 1878.

sentence of the day: momfluencers

"She has a doctorate in sociology for which she researched momfluencers, the 21st century's retort to Tupperware party hostesses." (review by Alexandra Jacobs of The story or your life: how social media shapes the way we experience everything, by Kathryn Jezer-Morton (Viking), in the New York times book review, August 23, 2026)

https://clickamericana.com/topics/home-garden/the-history-of-tupperware-parties-tupperware-ladies

sentence of the day: The drowned world and Tilt

Noah's Ark

from the Nuremberg Chronicle

"The Drowned World," though, remains an odd, woozy bird in his catalog -- a book unusually attuned, as Martin Amis wrote for the 50th anniversary reissue, to the 'world hum' of the 'near-after.'" (in a review of The drowned world by J.G. Ballard, 1962)

She's like Odysseus in an ill-fitting lavender maternity romper, crossing great landscapes of hardship and memory with one holy, imperfect goal: getting home. (in a review of Tilt by Emma Pattee, 2025)

Both sentences come from "Read like the wind. Beautiful disasters / by Leah Greenblatt," New York times book review, Sept. 6, 2026, p. 19

separated at birth: accidental Godfrey

https://www.tumblr.com/beatsmybongo/827002648669601792?source=share

DeWitt Godfrey at deCordova Sculpture Park & Museum, 2014

https://www.dewittgodfrey.com/

there is a god: slow down

"Plus, an artist introduces a device that slows a bike’s brakes in less-affordable neighborhoods, turning wealth inequality into physical sensation. That’s what art can do: Make ideas visceral." (from today's Hyperallergic email newsletter)

https://hyperallergic.com/artists-device-slows-down-citi-bikes-in-less-affordable-neighborhoods/ (copublished with Next City)

three fawns walked up to a guardrail

 

Three fawns were nibbling on a shrub in front of the Agnello house as I approached on my morning walk. Two were quite small and one was a little bigger. The guy from up the street stopped at the stop sign in his black Lincoln. The first little fawn pranced across the street and under the guardrail on the other side. The second small fawn followed pretty quickly. The third, bigger fawn took up the rear. When she got to the guardrail, she started under and realized she was perhaps too big to fit. She looked up to see that the guardrail would take some doing. Vacillate. She eventually bent down and slumped under the guardrail. It was a full body slump: legs and back, but it was more feasible than a jump over.

I am now reading A natural history of empty lots: field notes from urban edgelands, back alleys, and other wild places by Christopher Brown. The subtitle fits. He walks among and observes the supposedly empty places that teem with life, mostly wild. His observing is solace in tumultuous times.

National Brad Pitt Day

Last Sunday may have been a National Brad Pitt Day. Two reviews in the New York Times Book Review included references to the actor. 

https://www.cinemamoderne.com/en/films/details/thelma-louise/

Reviewer Dwight Garner included short summaries of some of the stories in his review of the story collection It Will Come Back to You by Sigrid Nunez (Riverhead). "There's a piece about a jostling mother and daughter, and one about a Brad Pitt impersonator. 'Brad' is hired by the adult children of a woman in hospice who is in thrall to the actor. The kids worry that the impersonator will be a sleazeball, a rheumy Elvis type. The story takes a turn when he turns out to be young and achingly beautiful. Nunez is picking at the seams of life."

Garner closes his review with his typically intriguing and illustrative language. "In the lesser stories (none is a flameout), Nunez's descriptive register slips. But 'It Will Come Back to You' is a reminder that she's among the best we have. I'd rather read one of her books than almost anyone else's. Her headlights are on, even in midday."

Ginia Bellafante's review of The Face: A Cultural History by Fay Bound-Alberti (Grand Central) notes that Brad Pitt is one in the two percent of the population that are affected by prosopagnosia, or face blindness. The review is accompanied by the clickbait of a photo of the achingly beautiful Brad Pitt. That's all she said about Brad Pitt: just the "so does Brad Pitt" in parenthesis and the caption of the photo.