Katherine Keenum

Four things struck me about this photograph of Pickard's Baulk in Derbyshire, England. First, all that greenness—not quite Middle-earth, but quintessentially English. Well, except, second: those stone walls instead of hedges. They locate the scene in the north and emphasize the rectilinearity of the fields. So, third, maybe a need for some rewilding? Let the trees in the middle spread? The central grove of trees is the fourth feature that delighted me, for it led me to the word baulk, one definition of which is "ground left unploughed as a boundary line between two ploughed portions" (OED). Splendid specificity!

Exhibition alert: A review in the Guardian of Mary Cassatt at Work, a new retrospective now at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, sent me to the museum's holdings of her work, where I found The Banjo Player shown here. Cassatt was as innovative as her male contemporaries, and it's good to see her career presented in depth. For those of us who can't get to Philadelphia this summer or to San Francisco in the fall for the exhibition, there's always the catalogue. Nothing beats seeing actual works for their colors texture, brushstrokes, and so forth; but the leisure to read about works and methods has its own rewards, not only for viewers, but also for writers of historical fiction.

I've just finished rereading one of my all-time favorite bedtime comfort reads: Summer Half by Angela Thirkell. My copy has this cover; and as soon as I picked it up, I could identify all the characters, even the gent with the moustache, Colin Keith. I visualize him differently (authors know readers do that), but it pleases me that Claire Minter-Kemp has obviously read the novel, for she depicts him as he appears in Thirkell's description. Not much point to this post except to say here's hoping the second half of summer 2024 supplies us all with some light moments. Happy Summer Solstice!

No, not the apocryphal cut-down cherry tree, but still-fragrant preserved cherries. The news that Archaeologists Unearth 35 Glass Bottles from the 18th Century at George Washington's Mount Vernon During Mansion Revitalization, Most Containing Perfectly Preserved Cherries and Berries made national headlines last week. It certainly is tantalizing to think we might learn from actual samples what preserves made at Mount Vernon in the 18th C tasted like and from DNA which variety of cherries were used.

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A sentence on p. 4 of the Spring 2024 issue of Almanac caught my attention: "Charlotte Randall, a mother of six, was a photographer in the small town of Clyde, Ohio." A woman making a living as a photographer for the cartes-de-visite so popular in the latter half of the 19th C? Whoo-hoo! Of course, I knew about female art photographers from Julia Margaret Cameron to Gertrude Käsebier, but women in the ordinary, everyday commercial world offers something new area to explore. One place to start is a Wikipedia Timelime of women in photography. Another is the article Zooming in on the places where early women photographers could build a career. And right off the bat, fiction writers, what do you make of these two midcentury women with the daguerreotype camera? Just look at those facial expressions!

Image via Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

Exhibition alert: In Where the Light Falls, I had one of my characters report briefly on an excursion to the Cirque Fernando, where his party saw Miss La La hang by her teeth from a trapeze. The incident was, of course, inspired by Degas' painting, Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando. I didn't actually dramatize the visit, and I'm glad now that I didn't; for it was only this spring that I learned from Denise Murrell that the performer in Degas' painting was biracial. If I could, I would now go to the new exhibition, Discover Degas and Miss La La at the National Gallery in London! The whole matter of Black people's experience in Paris in the 19th C is a rich area for exploration by historians in many fields and fiction writers alike.

Exhibition alert: Oh, what an idea! A small portrait is hidden behind another as part of a diptych that closes. Or it slides from a behind a panel with a different picture. Or a jeweled pendant twirls to reveal a portrait on the reverse. Hidden Faces: Covered Portraits of the Renaissance will be up at the MetMuseum through July 7, 2024. I can't get down to New York to see it, but a selection of objects from the show appears on the website, enough to set off the imagination. And catalogue, of course, provides more.

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This delectable recorder-playing dragon appears in the margins surrounding of a large illumination in Boccaccio's Fates of Illustrious Men and Women. It would make a great jigsaw puzzle. Better yet, it could prompt a story. Is it part of a musical quartet (if so, who else plays?)? A runaway from dragon life (if so, why?)? Is it a dragon brought up in a human court after hatching from a captured egg? I think it's alive and not a toy, but I suppose it could be a clever marionette. Now, if it is a dragon buttoned into a onesie, what are three other things that must be true of its world?