Month: December 2017

Winter’s Snow

Photographer Unknown, (Winter’s Snow)

“I love to watch the fine mist of the night come on,
The windows and the stars illumined, one by one,
The rivers of dark smoke pour upward lazily,
And the moon rise and turn them silver. I shall see
The springs, the summers, and the autumns slowly pass;
And when old Winter puts his blank face to the glass,
I shall close all my shutters, pull the curtains tight,
And build me stately palaces by candlelight.”
― Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal

 

The Abbey of Saint Gregory the Great

The Abbey of Saint Gregory the Great,, Downside in Somerset, United Kingdom

The Abbey of St Gregory the Great at Downside, commonly known as Downside Abbey, is a Benedictine monastery in England and the senior community of the English Benedictine Congregation. One of its main apostolates is the Downside School, for the education of children aged eleven to eighteen. Alumni of the school are known as Old Gregorians.

Both the abbey and the school are located at Stratton-on-the-Fosse between Westfield and Shepton Mallet in Somerset, South West England.

Downside Abbey has been designated by English Heritage as a ‘Grade I’ listed building. Sir Nikolaus Pevsner described the Abbey as “the most splendid demonstration of the renaissance of Roman Catholicism in England”

John Updike: “I Disguise Myself in My Skin”

Photographer Unknown, (The Lifeguard)

“Beyond doubt, I am a splendid fellow. In the autumn, winter and spring, I execute the duties of a student of divinity; in the summer I disguise myself in my skin and become a lifeguard. My slightly narrow and gingerly hirsute but not necessarily unmanly chest becomes brown. My smooth back turns the colour of caramel, which, in conjunction with the whipped cream of my white pith helmet, gives me, some of my teenage satellites assure me, a delightfully edible appearance. My legs, which I myself can study, cocked as they are before me while I repose on my elevated wooden throne, are dyed a lustreless maple walnut that accentuates their articulate strength. Correspondingly, the hairs of my body are bleached blond, so that my legs have the pointed elegance of, within the flower, umber anthers dusted with pollen.”
― John Updike, Pidgeon Feathers and Other Stories