How the Bard Won the West
How the Bard Won the West (Smithsonian Magazine, August, 1998). “Sometime in late 1863, a tall thin man rode out of an Army camp…”
Read MoreHow the Bard Won the West: Back Story
In the summer of 1997, I drove 1200 miles around the American West looking for Shakespeare, on assignment from the Smithsonian Magazine…
Read MoreZabdiel Boylston, in my dreams
No portrait of Zabdiel Boylston survives, but this is how I like to imagine him…
Read MoreLady Mary: Beauty and Brutality
Richardson’s 1726 portrait of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu in her Turkish robes hides her smallpox scars but paints in slavery…
Read MoreThe Turkish Bath by Ingres
Ingres’s painting of luxuriant nudity began as an awareness of absence. As a young man, the painter read Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s dream of unscarred skin…
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About My Blog
Occasional musings about stories, history, art, ideas, and the adventures of a writer's life...
