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 sister 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.

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/

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.

separated at birth: Paul Veronese

Oh look, Veronese is today's Artle artist. 

separated at ... birth?: Lanaudière

Shane's parents' cottage in Heated Rivalry in located in Lanaudière, Québec. We are informed of this by a caption while Shane is on the phone with Rose, outside the cottage. 

Fictionally, we know that that cottage is ten minutes from Shane's cottage. From videos about the series, we learn that the filming location for Shane's cottage is actually in Muskoka, a popular vacation and second home region in central Ontario, a couple hours north of Toronto.

Heated Rivalry is one of my current obsessions. Another obsession, quite the opposite, is the increasing acceptance and legalization of assisted dying. I was looking at the Times to see if the war in Iran was over or not and noted an article entitled "How Quebec, in a decade, came to lead the world in assisted dying," by Norimitsu Onishi. (article link) A few months ago I had never heard of Lanaudière, now I learn that it is the home of a new palliative care center and has the highest incidence in Quebec of assisted dying.

contrapposto

Donatello / David / Bargello

By Rabe! - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=98318744

Connor Storrie

@rivalryarchive

YouTube

https://youtube.com/shorts/Vehyh19SkGQ?si=Na_HlYjA9zclxyfD

1835-1910

When today's Artle artist biography came up, the life dates -- 1835-1910 -- looked familiar. We catalogers get to recognize life dates of people that come up repeatedly in our work. The artist was pretty well known but I just knew there was some other famous person that also had those life dates. Not only that, the person that popped into my head was Mark Twain. His dates are indeed 1835-1910 but it may be the social media trolling around "markwayne" that prompted thinking of Mark Twain. 

https://www.nga.gov/artworks/72856-lesson-study-jersey-coast

"not even a little"

Kip is working for the caterer at a fundraiser for St Thomas. He literally runs into Scott with a tray of some canapés. Kip and Scott have undoubtedly (Maria says for sure) been flirting with each other at the smoothie shop where Kip works as he plans his graduate studies in art history. Scott invites Kip out for Mexican after the reception and Kip asks if he minds waiting until he's done with the gig. Scott replies "not even a little."

This happens in episode 3 of Heated Rivalry. Like many, I have been rather obsessed with the series from Crave, a Canadian streaming service, and it's carried in the U.S. by HBO Max.

I took a bit of a break from that rom com to read The Guncle by Steven Rowley. Imagine my surprise and delight when Grant asks his Gay Uncle Patrick, or GUP, if they are "famouth" (he lisps). Patrick responds "not even a little bit" which I definitely heard in the voice of François Arnaud who plays Scott in Heated Rivalry.

There are oodles of websters who are making parallels in something like Heated Rivalry so I'm just joining the crowd and going from one medium to another.

separated at birth: circles and arcs

wien 2026

sprint95, via architectureofdoom

on tumblr

Robert Smithson - Broken Circle/Spiral Hill

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_Circle/Spiral_Hill

Oberpostdirektion, Kassel. Architect: Klaus Christiani.

Photos: Matthias Heiderich

on tumblr

tumblin' tumbleweeds

In the Accent Duel promo for Connor Storrie as host for Saturday Night Live this past Saturday night, he has a duel of accents with James Austin Johnson. As Johnson walks into the frame and challenges Storrie to the duel, a tumbleweed blows by. When you get to hell, tell them Rozanov sent you. Pow, bang!

When we lived at the edge of the Sand Hills in central Nebraska in the early 1960s, my dad fetched a tumbleweed for us for our Christmas tree one year. I can't picture it any more but I think we spray-painted it with silver.

"Tumbling Tumbleweeds" with the Sons of the Pioneers (1977)

yellow stairs and brutalist buildings

Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre, London

Monte Amiata housing, Gallaratese, Milan

(Carlo Aymonino, archt.)

separated at birth: rows of circles, in a grid

quilt on view at

Chapman Museum,

Glens Falls, N.Y.

October 2024

Nadia Gould

Because I am Young, Beautiful & Talented 2

1964

in exhibition at dieFirma (gallery)

October 2025-January 2026

Endeavor and Voyager

NVIDIA's new campus, designed by Gensler, consists of a triangular and a hexagonal building. It is featured in an article in Metropolis that I'm indexing for Avery. The names of the buildings are Endeavor and Voyager. Call out to the library vendor Endeavor and its Voyager system?

If Caillebotte were a photographer ...

Randy Tarampi, from Flickr

https://www.flickr.com/photos/randytarampi/32046695624/

 

funnels

For thirty years and a bit more, I have been involved with the Art NACO funnel of the Program for Cooperative Cataloging. It enables us art catalogers to participate in authority control more fully than we might be able to do individually. I coordinate the efforts of a dozen or so art libraries that create or revise name records that are included in the LC/NAF international authority file. There's also an Art SACO funnel that allows us to propose subject headings to add to the Library of Congress Subject Headings file. So "funnels" has been a (good) trigger word for me for a long time.

Imagine my surprise when I got an email announcement from the SS United States Conservancy today that announced that the "second SS United States funnel [was] to be preserved." They use the word "funnel" to describe the smokestacks that were so prominent on the ship.

This illustration is a rendering of the proposed SS United States Museum and Visitor Experience designed by Thinc, LMN Architects, and Buro Happold. More information here.

separated at birth: WEMI

Functional requirements for bibliographic records (FRBR) is a conceptual model of the bibliographic universe to describe entities, relationships, and attributes. The first group of entities are Work, Expression, Manifestation, and Item (WEMI). A Work is intellectual or artistic creativity and it is realized in an Expression, which is embodied in a Manifestation and exemplified in an Item. This is easiest to wrap your head around with something like Hamlet. The story was created in the brain of William Shakespeare (or whoever). It was realized in something like The tragicall historie of Hamlet Prince of Denmarke which was embodied in an edition printed in 1603 in London for N.L. and John Trundell and exemplified in the copy at the Huntington Library. Lots of print resources only come out in one edition and this is a heck of a lot of infrastructure for the library catalog to carry.

In the library cataloging rules such as Resource description and access, relationships and attributes are linked to particular levels. For example, the creator William Shakespeare is a relationship to the Work. If the Huntington copy has a later binding, this is a relationship to the Item. This all gets more complex for music and visual arts and other resources. There's a concise and helpful discussion of "FRBR, WEMI & music" on the website of Gilmore Library of Music at Yale.

Even more concise is a quotation from Michael Tilson Thomas in an article in last Sunday's Times. The quotation is from a 2017 interview. "I have encouraged people to color outside the lines for lack of a better analogy. We're not trying to reproduce the notation here. We're trying to get back to the inspiration that caused the notation to exist." It is not often that FRBR and WEMI are spoken of so aesthetically.

separated at birth: simple tasks like dealing with your shoes

They've argued. He's all banged up. She's going to her own room for the night. He sits on the bed to get undressed but his injuries prevent his reaching his feet. She helps him take off his shoes. (The Diplomat, Season 2, on Netflix)

He's a troubled kid, always carrying a gun. Mom gets exasperated and kicks him out of the house. He ends up staying with a couple ne'er-do-wells. They treat him badly and make him do criminal things. He finally can't take it anymore after they pee in his shoes. "They're expensive. We went on a special trip to London to get them." He drags himself home. She asks him about the smell. He just says "My shoes" and she sits him down and takes the shoes off and gives him a hug. (The Durrells in Corfu, Season 1, Episode 4, on PBS Passport)

Unconditional love ... though maybe intermittent and contextual.

separated at birth: celadon shards and green tiles

 

Li Hongwei

The Origin, 2022

(exhibition on view currently at the

Alfred Ceramic Art Museum)

detail of façade

Chao Center for Asian Art

The Ringling

Sarasota, Florida

Machado Silvetti, architects

Palladianism in Kane, Pa., and Yorkshire

McDermott Mausoleum

Kane, Pennsylvania

Temple of the Four Winds

Castle Howard

Yorkshire

Wikimedia Commons

By jcw1967 from Leeds, UK - Temple of the Four Winds, Castle Howard, 17112017, JCW1967, EOS 1Ds (2), CC BY 2.0

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=78305779

Miuccia Chickanzeff: ah, Venice