I have 8 antique book auctions finishing up on eBay in an hour & the numbers look great. Yay holiday shopping season!

1/ I sat on my bed on Friday after the kids went down for the night and made this. It's my own setting of Cædmon's Hymn, inspired by my friend Father Andrew Stephen Damick's recent trip to the UK, particularly to Whitby.

The Great Courses is one of the shining points of the streaming era.

Watching a "Great Courses" series on US National Parks, I've learned about "Nebkha Dunes." Desert sand collects around small tufts of hardy plants. Eventually the sandhill grows high, then the plant reroots & grows higher to stay above it. And on & on til it's a genuine dune. Not unline an atoll.

Reminds me of the Old English riddle about the bookworm who literally devours knowledge yet is none the wiser.

If you ever thought the term "bookworm" was just a saying, it's not. This formerly gorgeous 1723 leather-bound French book has been reduced to kindling. Thoroughly unsellable, maybe worth $5 to someone at a country craft fair.

"Arr of Courtly Love" #MakeATitlePiratey

What's cool is these rules are laid out in a scene where "our hero" has left the mortal world & entered a Fäerie just like Tolkien's. An enchanted land under our sky & stars but only reachable via magic/grace. Complete with King & Queen. Compare with "Smith of Wootton Major." - Art of Courtly Love

Capellanus's 12 rules of love 1 Don't be greedy 2 Be faithful 3 Don't harm another's affair 4 Love one you'd be OK marrying 5 Don't lie 6 Don't blab about your affair 7 Obey your lady 8 Be modest 9 Speak no evil 10 Don't blab about others' affairs 11 Be courteous 12 Take only what she freely gives.

🚨Bunker Hill Truther Alert🚨 This book from 1857 states that the Battle of Bunker Hill never happened because the combatants were good Christians & wouldn't do that kind of thing.

"After his 60th year in a man... the natural heat begins to lose its force, and there is no consolation for him except food & drink." - Capellanus, 'Art of Love' Bummer.

New read: "The Art of Courtly Love" by Andreas Capellanus. The modern intro suggests that Medieval European ideas of courtly love (many of which have trickled down to us still) came from an unexpected mix of Ovid and Spanish-Moorish influences & thought. It'll be interesting to see where that goes.

Cædmon's Hymn, by me! This was my first time really using Garageband!

Finishing "High Renaissance." Michael Levey, who I loved in "Early Renaissance," peppers this one with untranslated passages in French, Latin, Italian, German. He makes in-jokes about obscure 19th C art historians. He undermines his Mannerism author-colleague. He shows off & just looks like a dick.

There's something fabulous about 14th C Italian painting. It's not quite Renaissance yet. There's still a two-dimensionality, an overlayering of allegory. But people are starting to become true people - real individuals, recognizable. There are *huge* things bubbling up, almost ready to burst forth.

A fantastic book launch tonight of a new book by David Breeze which I’m privileged to have contributed too. Out now and an excellent publication. #HadriansWall

Lt D'Amato. Not a red shirt, but may as well have been. #RIP #ThatWhichSurvives

Like, here's the fort, Bremenium (High Rochester), now site of a modern farm complex. And the right shows the satellite pulled away to see what's around it. Not a lot, even in 2025!

Disappointingly, the archaeologists don't appear to be baffled.

Findmypast offers free access to military records to help everyone uncover, understand and honour their ancestors’ military experiences from 7-13 Nov. #ww1 #ancestors

Pope Julius II wanted Michelangelo to craft Julius's tomb - the biggest, gaudiest thing. It would've had life-size muses carved in marble all looking sad because their greatest benefactor Julius had died, & the arts were going to wither. These people were just as ridiculous as today's billionaires.

I hear some billionaire wants to drop $500 million to build a Colossus in San Francisco Bay. I say let him. I'm reading a ton now about Renaissance art. Almost all of it was a monumentally expensive tribute to hubris & vanity. Yet it continues to leave its mark, & sometimes even moves & inspires.

Another political-for-poetical listing today. It's just funny how often it happens.

Sometimes I'm reminded that plate tectonics - the fundamental principle defining the continuing evolution of Earth - wasn't actually laid out & defined until 1967. We had a satellite orbiting the moon before we even understood the basic building-block mechanism of the earth.

Our mentally unwell cat has taken to hopping up on our desks now and walking on our computers. I just came back from down the hall to find that she had changed my browser to Incognito Mode & was searching for "brfg."

Do I *really* wish the reader hadn't underlined this? Deeply, in red ink? Yes. Can I blame them even a little? No.

I honestly can't say enough nice things about Facsimile Dust Jackets' work for the LOTR books. Having nice original-style dustjackets on this 1st ed (later printings) set really elevates them. Big fan!

There are little flubs book auction sellers do over & over, which are kind of charming. One is that when the book is "Poetical Works," the seller misreads it as "Political Works." Happens a lot. I wonder if it's part of our modern 24-hour-news-cycle culture of calamity. Or if it's just a thing.

This coming weekend marks the 25th anniversary of the filming of the Ride of the Rohirrim sequences for LOTR. In the documentaries, Viggo Mortensen mused about what people would think of the movies 25 years on. What would feel dated, what would survive. 25 years felt SO far in the future then.

Hooray, have finished Duolingo Italian. And I think I even learned stuff. :)

Lecture 8, Dutch Masters: The Age of Rembrandt, 8:45-9:35, may be the greatest 50 seconds in Great Courses professor history. His commentary is pure discursive genius. Go listen. Now.

Speaking of not messing around.

We just finished S1 of Broadchurch. Wow that show does not mess around.

Someone was selling this large 1855 Family Bible on eBay for $10 just because the front joint was loose. It even has a couple hand-colored plates in it! Joint was an easy fix, now I've got this beauty.

BTW the translation for this 1594 Isocrates was done by one "Hieronymous Wolf." And that name alone should add $100 to the book's value.

Remember, Remember, The 5th of November, Gunpowder, treason and… ARSE BISCUITS! Ever had a burning (or fizzling) desire to know what Guy Fawkes said in his moment of failure? Wonder no more. #PlaymobilInfestation #GuyFawkes #BonfireNight

BTW when I say chonky I mean it. It's only 7 1/2" x 5 1/2" in dimensions, but it weighs 2 1/2 lbs!

And here's the cover after first round of de-griming and conditioning. Now comes the decision of whether to stop here or continue cleaning. It's a case-by-case choice & a lot goes into the decision. Mostly instinct.

Please say hello to this chonky boy, my newest addition - a 1594 Isocrates bound in incredible ornately stamped pigskin.

My next major project is prepping this amazing 1608 Amorum Emblemata ("Emblems of Love") by Otto van Veen. 125 engravings, & text in three languages: Latin, Italian, & English! Book is complete & intact inside a 19th C binding. I'm conditioning & stabilizing it & doing light repairs to tears.

Next Victorian Family Bible project is nearly finished. This one was a mess but had really good bones. I'm glad I took it on.

My daughter and I have started making a weekly early American history TikTok that uses something from the news as a jumping off point. The first one covered Pat Lyon and the Bank of PA Heist in 1798. For Halloween this week we discuss grave robbing and the 1788 Doctor’s Riot. Check it out: 🗃️

This episode is also the one with the infamous Penis Tree at Massa Marittima, only rediscovered in 2000. No one knows what it (or the penis trees in Medieval manuscripts) means. Every self-assured expert who lays out a theory based on part of the imagery has to ignore other parts to make it work.

Got this tidbit by rewatching the incomparable "Hidden Italy" series on Prime TV. Much of the narration is in Italian with subtitles, and I've been so captivated with the imagery that I have to go back later to actually read what I'm looking at.

So #TIL that a stretch of Tuscan coast was held by Spain in the 16th & 17th Cs. There they built 35 forts & watchtowers about 3 miles apart. Beacons could be lit to immediately spread news of attack by pirates or the French navy.

I was going thru the Roman coins I've picked up over the years, and found this fun thing. Constantine did a massive overhaul of the money system, including standardized mintmarks. At the bottom of the reverse of this little copper coin (follis) is "AQP" -- AQuileia, at the Prime (1st) workshop!

eBay search on "1600s" books strikes again. "Introducing Danny Boyd, the New York private eye who takes whiskey straight, women curvy and murder... in his stride." Signet book #1663

I’ll be playing some lovely #drones for the #DarkExperimentalAmbientDrone (D.E.A.D.) raid train in just over 4 hours (at 10pm CST). Come celebrate our loved ones who have moved beyond the veil. www.twitch.tv/apryl_knight #trombone #hurdygurdy #synthesizer #looping

Whoever bought the "Nuk 'Em" game prop from "RoboCop"↗️➡️ when it was auctioned off by Profiles in History ⬇️ some years ago not only also got a "Back to the Future II"⬅️ prop but a #StarTrekTNG prop as well, as it was seen (with silver 3D chess pieces) in Wesley's quarters in "The Dauphin"↖️.😀

STP said it in Thief of Time “'Wen considered the nature of time and understood that the universe is, instant by instant, recreated anew. Therefore, he understood, there is in truth no past, only a memory of the past. Blink your eyes, and the world you see next did not exist when you closed them.”