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Picturing a World

Green Earth

January 25, 2017
It happened the way it should. Last week while browsing at a local independent bookstore, I happened on Green Earth by Kim Stanley Robinson. The book is the author’s condensation of his near-future trilogy about climate change, science, and government into one updated novel. It’s wonderful!

And oh, how grimly needed in light of the Trump administration’s assault on science and the public’s right to know what our agencies want to tell us. Scary times.

On a less rueful note: writers, I recommend  Read More 
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Inez Milholland

January 23, 2017
Tags: Suffrage, work-in-progress
Unknown artist, Forward into Light (n.d.)
Photographs of Inez Milholland in a white costume on a white horse leading the March 1913 woman’s suffrage parade in Washington appeared this past weekend in several stories about the 2017 Women’s March in Washington. She was brilliant; she was dashing; and she died  Read More 
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Girl writing—Henriette Browne

January 18, 2017
Tags: Women artists
Henriette Browne, A Girl Writing (ca. 1870)
As we go into an uncertain future on Inauguration Day 2017, I am calming myself at night by reading Maud Hart Lovelace’s Betsy-Tacy books. As girls, lots of female writers identified with Jo March of Little Women. Betsy Ray was an even greater heroine to me. Read More 
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Girls at Coney Island, 1905

January 14, 2017
Blog alert: Parasols, sand, surf, and crazy rides in 1905—see it all in the video James Gurney has posted today at Young Ladies Visit Coney Island, 1905. The girls are much younger than my Mattie in ANONYMITY, but I count it as Research, Pure Delight Department. Read More 
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Bishopsgate

January 5, 2017
Blog alert: John Tallis’s book, London Street Views—as presented in the January 5, 2017, post at Spitalsfield Life—was intended to supply map aids to travelers unfamiliar with London. Its simple depiction after depiction of street façades would be a boon to any historical novelist setting a story in London in the 1830’s, but it also calls up a eerily empty city. Science fiction anyone? Or pictures to cut out for a paper-doll town. Or the project of an eccentric family of children. Or—what? Read More 
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Writing in Bed (2)

January 2, 2017
Underwood & Underwood photograph of Mark Twain writing in bed (1906)
After the frenzy of the holidays, anybody for staying in bed and writing? Dancers, painters, sculptors, and musicians need to be up and about. Women writers may need a room of their own, but many make do with simply writing in bed before they get on with the demands of the day. Add J. K. Rowling to the list (which includes Edith Wharton and Colette). She is quoted  Read More 
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