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)

"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.

separated at birth: star axis to heaven

"As I climbed the steps through the mesa and into the pyramid, the window at the top of the staircase appeared to expand. I felt drawn up the tunnel, slowly toward the stars. The wind outside sounded like ocean surf, evoking visions of mariners with their sextants." -- Travis Diehl, on Star Axis, by Charles Ross, in eastern New Mexico, in the New York Times, July 26, 2026, Arts & Leisure, page 10-13, with glorious photographs by Brad Trone.

As I read this description of walking up into Star Axis, I could only think of The Ascent of the Blessed, by Hieronymus Bosch. The painting is now in the Palazzo Ducale in Venice and a detail of the painting, from a calendar given to me by Eva, hangs on my kitchen wall, always inspiring me onward.

Las Vegas Strip

Today's Connections was not coming easily to me. There were four words that seemed to be somehow associated with Las Vegas. It turned out that they were associated with "strip" as an adjective or noun. So it was kind of Las Vegas but a bit removed. 

(from the Wikipedia page for Las Vegas Strip)

Sorry if I should have warned about this being a potential spoiler. Or perhaps ... you're welcome.

FRBR and slug identifiers

300460205 | expressions | multidisciplinary concepts, … Associated Concepts Facet

300460206 | manifestations | multidisciplinary concepts, … Associated Concepts Facet
300460207 | slug identifiers | identification numbers and codes, identifying artifacts, ... Objects Facet

These three terms were in this order in an email announcement of new records in the Art & Architecture Thesaurus. My first attraction was just to the word "slug" so close to two levels of the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR). Then I looked at the slug identifiers record in AAT and now know what to call the "Strings derived from a title or identifier as used in the trailing part of a URL." So I guess it's more like a typesetter's slug than the mollusk.

(orange slug from Wikipedia page)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slug

separated at birth: Paul Veronese

Oh look, Veronese is today's Artle artist.