Rain by Raymond Carver #poetry

It feels like a brag but The Screening Room in Kingston is playing the uncut Béla Tarr film, Sátántangó, on Friday - all 7.5 hours of it. I haven't looked forward to a film screening so much in a very long time! #filmsky #cinemasky #hungarianculture #krasznahorkai #belatarr

Rembrandt painted old age like no one else. Look at this self-portrait from 1661 — the weathered skin, the tired, experienced eyes, wisps of white hair under the cloth cap. Rembrandt understood that a face full of years is a face full of stories. Getting old is a privilege. Beautiful. #artsky

On a Wednesday in 1961, the Metropolitan Museum of New York paid a record $2.3 million for Rembrandt's Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer (1653) and by that Saturday it was already on display. That first day, the painting attracted 50,000 people to see it. The 2nd day, 70,000 came. #artsky

Today I read in Anthony Amore's & Tom Mashberg's book Stealing Rembrandts that this painting, Jacob de Gheynt II by Rembrandt, is the most stolen painting in the world, having been stolen at least four times from various museums since 1966. #artsky #booksky

A PORTABLE PARADISE by Roger Robinson And if I speak of Paradise then I'm speaking of my grandmother who told me to carry it always on my person, concealed, so no one else would know but me. That way, they can't steal it, she'd say. ... #worldpoetryday #poetry

Been deep in Peter Cowie's biography of Ingmar Bergman this week — God and the Devil — and while the filmmaking detail is endlessly fascinating, what keeps stopping me cold are the contemporary reviews. #IngmarBergman #filmmaking #filmsky #cinema #filmcriticism

No words.

Wow what a feat and practically music to my ears: the prevalence of reading (falling) with references to Muriel Spark, Iris Murdoch AND Simone Weil! Could this piece by Mark Kingwell feel any more pertinent?! @theglobeandmail.com #booksky www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/arti...

And we were already getting used to grass and flowers budding #winter #spring #gananoque

I've been enjoying Eça de Queiros's The Crime of Father Amaro (handsome young man, forced into the priesthood by circumstance not devotion & his forbidden love affair with the daughter of a town aristocrat - mid-19th century Portugal). I asked AI to create an image of Father Amaro. Voilà! #booksky

I’m in the middle of reading Diana Marcum’s book The Tenth Island - a semi-journalistic account of the Azores and the Azorean diaspora — and really sad to learn that she died a few years ago. What an interesting writer and what a sad loss. #azores #travelwriting #booksky

Really loving this Portuguese song which riffs on the traditions and tone of Fado but is also very 2026 | maria by Carolina Deslandes & Rodrigo Correia #portuguese #portugal open.spotify.com/track/0G7D0P...

#ICYMI Let The Isabel Voices take you on The Journey, a moving, immersive musical experience that invites audiences to walk through stories of healing, resilience, and light, guided by the power of voice and strings. #YGK #YGKConcert All the details here: www.kingstonist.com/news/the-isa...

For more about Richardson's book, take a listen to @jackewilson.bsky.social's conversation with author Megan Marshall who wrote the forward to this book. #books @princetonupress.bsky.social

Day 8 of Graphic Novels I Love: Albert Camus - The First Man by Jacques Ferrandez, translated by Ryan Bloom. #graphicnovels #booksky #camus #france #algeria #bandedessinee #comics

The woods looked like a painting this morning

This is such a loss: his books that explored the brutality of Portuguese colonialism, his love of Africa, his use of language and his pushing out the boundaries of what a novel is and can be. He was miraculous. #booksky #portugal #portugueseliterature www.nytimes.com/2026/03/05/b...

According to KCFF, the 2026 festival set a new attendance record with 16,000 tickets sold, selling out 85 per cent of the screenings, and handing out a record 13 awards at a ceremony on Sunday evening. #YGK #FilmFestival More details here: www.kingstonist.com/news/french-...

#ICYMI Special guest JP Longboat will join The Isabel Voices to enhance the immersive experience of 'The Wound in the Water', one of the many pieces audiences will experience at 'The Journey', their upcoming #concert event. #YGK Full details here: www.kingstonist.com/news/first-n...

Carney’s India strategy promises many benefits www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/arti...

This NYT living room collection drives me crazy. Beautiful, sure, but maybe one actually looks like somewhere you'd want to hang out. It's a pretentious, consumerist fantasy of how wealthy people want you to think they live. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/28/t...

I'm so excited to share that I'll be singing with the Isabel Voices in The Journey on March 15, 2026 at the Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts in #Kingston 🎶 www.kingstonist.com/news/the-isa...

Picked up a old copy of *The Razor's Edge* by Somerset Maugham — spine cracked, pages slightly yellow — and I've barely surfaced since. There's something about reading a book that's passed through other hands, other lives. I'm really loving this novel. #booksky

Moving from Shanghai to Canada 20 years ago taught me something that took a decade to sink in: the best way to survive winter is to go outside in it (with the right gear). I won't pretend I love it. But out in the open air, it's more than manageable — it might even be fun.

This painting faintly resembles our small town at the moment (only cars and parking lots somewhere in the distance). | Hunters in the Snow (Jagers in de Sneeuw) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (Dutch, 1525-1569)

When brutal winter feels cozy and full of hygge from the backyard. #WinterCozy #HomeLife

A John Berger biography is coming in September and honestly? I'm considering taking a week's leave, disappearing somewhere quiet, and reading nothing else. Some books deserve that kind of attention. This feels like one of them. 📖 www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/790677...

Brett and Jocelyn were so devastated at the disappointing Olympic performance, I got a little teary for them.

From Gold by Rumi (translated by Haleh Liza Gafori) #booksky #poetry #rumi #farsi

Paul Theroux has this lovely story about sitting with Pico Iyer in a Maui café when Obama happened to walk in. No appointment, no agenda — just a chance encounter. And what Theroux remembered most was how Obama talked about their books with genuine understanding.

I feel kind of bad for the guy, but I feel much worse for the countless others in his position who are just trying to keep their heads down. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

This interview + game with Jody Foster is super charming. I just saw La vie privée on the weekend and she's so serious in it, you forget how funny she can be. youtu.be/DjljoQI_5Ys?...

One of my favourite (small) roles of Catherine O'Hara was Gail in Scorsese's excellent film After Hours (1985) where she plays a Softee Ice Cream truck driver and who joins the mob searching for Paul (played by Griffin Dunne). She's psycho level scary. And funny.

Registration for this goes live at 10am ET today and tickets will go fast! | Toni at Random Mon Feb 23, 7pm at Toronto Reference Library. Free registration | www.eventbrite.ca/e/1976931144...

What do you do when your mother leaves you a letter addressed to your future self—and she's the poet Anne Sexton? In this 1994 archival recording, Linda Gray Sexton speaks with devastating honesty about loving someone who was both mentor and burden. www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgzn...

“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” - Orwell's '1984'

Julius Tutsch (1890-1944), Nakampe, Prague (c. 1930)

Canadian artwork of the day is yet another Louis Muhlstock (1904-2001) piece, this one entitled Supper for Two (circa 1935). | I've long admired the work of the Belgian woodcut artist, Frans Masereel (1889-1972) and Muhlstock's woodcuts very much remind me of Masereel's quieter moments.

"We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition." - Mark Carney at Davos. I love this framework of the sign in the window courtesy of Václav Havel. I feel Havel's loss deeply—he'd have much to say about this moment. Carney does right by him, at any rate. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pg4r...

"The idea of resurrection is, I think, a botanical idea...All plants, which we view as less evolved that us, actually know how to die in such a way that they can come back to life again." - Georgi Gospodinov, Death and the Gardener

My nightstand is getting a little overloaded.

From last week’s New Yorker lol

Canadian painting of the day is another Louis Muhlstock (1904-2001) piece, Ruelle Leduc (c. 1940), in an area of Montreal that has totally disappeared. This is the site now of Habitations Jeanne Mance, the oldest existing public housing project in Canada at 100 Boulevard De Maisonneuve.

📹 Vídeo | En Groenlandia y Copenague los manifestantes le dicen Trump que la isla “no está en venta”. “Que América se vaya”. social.elpais.com/f_7…

Just a block from home, the morning was magic.

Linda, Dolly, Emmylou ❤️

My quiet home office corner

The Canadian painting of the day is View from a Window (1938) by Louis Muhlstock (1904-2001) which depicts a Montreal alleyway behind where 3540 Rue Durocher is today. That's the Southeast corner of Mont Royal in the distance.

My my my this Denis Johnson novel, The Stars at Noon, set in a dull but war-torn Nicaragua in 1984, is a great way to kick off a snowy Thursday morning in winter.