A friend brought one of Ina Garten's utterly gorgeous trifles to bookclub today and now it's all I can think about. He used lemon pound cake and it is the way.

Galileo Galilei - Sketches of stars in the Orion constellation as viewed by Galileo through his telescope

I was scolded by a wren this evening. There’s a first time for everything.

And this is where he lived.

For Proust'a birthday: some pictures by Eugène Atget from 1898-1910 in Paris' 8th arrondissement where Proust lived while writing In Search of Lost Time. #AContinuation

It's very gratifying to see so much appreciation for Egana's My Dreadful Body, in my translation.

Happy birthday Marcel Proust, born #onthisday in 1871. Celebrate with our post exploring the artworks he mentions in Swann's Way (the 1st volume of his great A la recherche du temps perdu), including paintings by Giotto, Botticelli, and Poussin: publicdomainreview.org/collection/p... #otd

amazing how cicadas sound like TV static: precursor, spin-off, and now descendant

For a myriad of reasons known only to itself, a chipmunk likes to sit on the window ledge outside my bedroom window and CHEEP angrily and defiantly at the world right after sunrise. This individual has desisted for the last few mornings and it has been bliss.

Reading Audre Lorde’s Movement Song for the hundredth time: your face in the evening schools of longing through mornings of wish and ripen we were always saying goodbye

If there’s anything I’ve learned about green teas during the last few summers, it’s that the water temperature and brew times have to be just right. And when they are? Divine.

It's amazing how a song can suddenly come back into the mind after not being heard for so many years. Meadowlarks by Fleet Foxes came back to me this evening. a great comfort.

Evening summer ritual: watching the fireflies start to flicker as night falls.

A sudden, startling footnote in Act 3 of As You Like It. There's a lot to unpack here.

I watched the first episode of Wong Kar Wai's Blossoms Shanghai 繁花 last night and wasn't prepared for the 1st episode to be a mini-movie. Though perhaps I should have guessed? Looking forward to watching more.

thoughts of rebellion: locking myself up with Richardson's Clarissa and reading without interruption for hours on end

The Art Institute of Chicago's miniature rooms are cleaned at least twice a year, demanding patience, precision and a meditative state of mind.

Sometimes it's good to stop everything and listen to the rain.

Cyanometer. Horace-Bénédict de Saussure. 1788.

Is this the summer I read that massive biography on Sylvia Plath

the dream

I've only killed one earwig in the house this summer but that's still far too many.

Agnès Varda points the way

I'm starting to think reading Shakespeare is Vitamin C for the mind.

Drifting

Retiring to the canopy of the bedroom, turning on the bedside light, taking the big dictionary to bed, clutching the unabridged bulk, heavy with the weight of all the meanings between these covers, smoothing the thin sheets, thick with accented syllables—all are exercises in the conscious regimen

🦇 #BatsInArt #PreciousBats #DecorativeArt #French #ArtNouveau #MullerFrères #Luneville Henri Muller (1868 - 1936), Muller Frères, Luneville BAT VASE, ca. 1900 Glass

Love hearing a lone cicada's song during the final light of day.

I am so tired of the doomers that jump into my mentions and doom it up. If you do this, you will be blocked.

"I wondered, “How many fears have there been that I’ve learned to make mine? What am I, just myself, afraid of and what have I been taught to fear?” Maybe in the other life there had been something; here, now, considering it, I could think of nothing."

I'm pleased with this

The perfume from the milkweed was so heavy and intoxicating: I had to dodge a few drunken bumblebees while photographing the flowers.

Goodnight. ✨ 🖼️ Dorothy Lathrop from a 1922 book of fairy-poems by Walter de la Mare.

A colony of mushrooms recently appeared in the backyard. They are loving all this rain and I’m wondering how big they’ll get.

New on the blog today, thoughts on LADIES OF THE RACHMANINOFF EYES by Henry Van Dyke. A fabulous coming-of-age story featuring a precocious black teen raised by 2 eccentric women in 1960s US. Witty, barbed, tender & poignant, a 5-star knockout read for me! jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2026/06/23/l...

Mirror reflects the sky

I can always trust to this place to tell me many bad things and much good things.

‘From the very first I took a firm and rooted dislike to him, and I flatter myself that my first judgements are usually very shrewd.’ Agatha Christie, The Mysterious Affair of Styles So it turns out Captain Hastings was wrong and proud right from the very start and he would never waver from that!

As I’ve continued to have bad seasonal allergy issues since March, my doctor recommended I take pepcid along with my other antihistamines and I’m amazed how much it’s helped.

I drove on Lower Wacker Drive without fear and panic today. It's an excellent day.

Not the usual pre-performance warning for a play

Muppet Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus

The first day of summer is tomorrow but the cicadas have already started.

Book binding. Paul Gruel. 1927. Image: TWAM.

How to talk about this novel? Cagnati is one of those rare and fiercely brave authors. She dives deep into the pain and loss of women discarded and used over and over after being labeled ‘crazy’ by society. A difficult read but well worth it. #NYRBWomen26

Amongst my favorite dogs are those that look like disgruntled mops.

The sunshine is sweet after a day of rain.

cold summer rain, the house cracks its bones.

that moment in the evening when you're too tired to deal with the grammatical hell that is lie/lay