"With striking dexterity and range, he explores how advocates reawakened Bach’s compositions and Vermeer’s paintings after one and two centuries of slumber..."

"... how technological advances rekindled theories of continental drift and black holes; how accidents resuscitated hand-washing and genetics; and how war renewed interest in the submarine and 'The Great Gatsby.'"

From "What if the Best Ideas Are Already Here, Waiting to Be Rediscovered? 'Sleeping Beauties,' by the musician David Byrne, explores artistic and scientific innovations that were overlooked before being embraced" (NYT).

The article is by Adam Grant, who is organizational psychologist at the Wharton School. Instead of embedding a David Byrne video, I'll show you this Adam Grant TED talk:

"He seeks to unsettle and entertain; after all, an alternative pronunciation of his alter ego’s name, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, is 'Mischief Egotistical.'"

I'm reading "An Indigenous Painter Sees a Vermeer, and the Sparks Fly/For a new show at the Frick Collection, Kent Monkman imagines what Indigenous people see when they see fur trappers, General Custer and even Jeff Bezos" (NYT gift link)

"The people of Barcelona, Lisbon and Venice are sick of Airbnb and its effect on their cities."

"In Marseille, where activists may be both more stubborn and more chic than elsewhere, public enemy number one is not M Macron but the ubiquitous valise à roulettes (wheelie suitcase), without which no self-respecting weekender would even consider travelling in the 21st century. Or would they? I used to feel smug as my dear domestic colleague slung his bag heavily over his shoulder at airports and railway stations (he considers wheels infra dig). But in Amsterdam the other day – we were there to see the Rijksmuseum’s sold-out Vermeer exhibition – I felt things shift. The sound of my plastic wheels on cobbles and tramlines was loud in my ears: a leper’s bell announcing my approach. As T sliced through the crowds, silently and stylishly, I was envious of him and embarrassed for myself."

 
From "I felt wheelie awful in Amsterdam; no wonder they want British tourists to stay away" (The Guardian).

I haven't seen "infra dig" in a long time, long enough to need to look it up to be sure I got it. Here's something from William Safire, in the NYT, from 2006, when — It's almost hard to believe — "infrastructure" was a word worth writing a column about:

Infra is Latin for "below; inferior to"; it is best known for its use in infra dig, which means "beneath one's dignity." Infrastructure was introduced into wonkish political jargon by Emanuel Shinwell, Labor's minister of defense, in the House of Commons in 1950. The Conservative Winston Churchill rose to give warning: "As to this new word with which he has dignified our language" - a subtle play on infra dig - "we must have full opportunity to consider it and to consult the dictionary." 

When the word was used again in Commons, Churchill sallied forth in relentless ridicule: "In this debate we have had the usual jargon about 'the infrastructure of a supranational authority.' ... It may well be that these words infra and supra have been introduced into our current political parlance by the band of intellectual highbrows who are naturally anxious to impress British Labor with the fact that they learned Latin at Winchester." 

Bill Clinton picked up the wonkism in his 1992 campaign, urging "investment in our infrastructure." But no Churchill rose in the Republican ranks to be witheringly critical.

Anyway... are wheels on luggage beneath your dignity? 

"I thought the memo had gone out that the word 'luminous' had been banned from book reviews."

I wrote in December 2009, recalling a wonderful 2007 essay by Joe Queenan.

In "Astonish Me," Queenan wrote:

Several years ago, overwhelmed by the flood of material unleashed annually by the publishing industry, I decided to establish a screening program by purchasing only books that at least one reviewer had described as ''astonishing.'' 

Previously, I had limited my purchases to merchandise deemed ''luminous'' or ''incandescent,'' but this meant I ended up with an awful lot of novels about bees, Provence or Vermeer. The problem with incandescent or luminous books is that they veer toward the introspective, the arcane or the wise, while I prefer books that go off like a Roman candle. When I buy a book, I don't want to come away wiser or happier or even better informed. I want to get blown right out of the water by the author's breathtaking pyrotechnics. I want to come away astonished. 

He was making fun of the absurd overuse of the verb "astonish" in book promotions.

[T]he truth is, if nobody describes a book as astonishing, it probably isn’t astonishing, and if it isn’t astonishing, who needs it?

I remembered that essay 2 years after I read it, as I was reading the New York Times piece "10 Best Books of 2009," which called a memoir "luminous." I said "How can I trust their judgment? To be fair, they didn't call anything 'incandescent' or 'astonishing.'" 

And I'm remembering it again, now 15 years later, as I'm seeing — at Grammarphobia — that there's a new book, "Blurb Your Enthusiasm: An A–Z of Literary Persuasion," by Louise Willder. 

The blub is ‘my 100 words of little white lies’, she says. ‘There has to be some kind of sugar coating and, yes, lying.’ Of course, one has to draw the line somewhere, and Willder would like to see fewer shopworn adjectives on book covers, specifically ‘luminous’, ‘dazzling’, ‘incandescent’, ‘stunning’, ‘shimmering’, ‘sparkling’, ‘glittering’, ‘devastating’, ‘searing’, ‘shattering’, ‘explosive’, ‘epic’, ‘electrifying’, ‘dizzying’, ‘chilling’, ‘staggering’, ‘deeply personal’ and the ubiquitous ‘haunting’. 

Hooray! Publishers (and reviewers), take note. I never could understand ‘incandescent’. Even light bulbs aren’t incandescent anymore. And while we’re at it, I’d like to blue-pencil the noun phrases ‘rite of passage’, ‘coming of age’ and ‘richly woven tapestry’....

What words can you use when all the words have been used before? It's promotion, so you can't just use the truth as your guiding light. So I'll just say let your guiding light be never go toward the light. If you're describing a text, never use metaphors suggesting that the words are emitting light. So no "luminous,"  no "incandescent," no "glittering" or "shimmering" or "sparkling." 

"The FBI says it has solved the decades-old mystery of who stole $500m... worth of art from Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum..."

"The key goal here is to recover those paintings and bring them back," said US Attorney Carmen Ortiz.

Just after midnight on 18 March 1990, two men posing as police officers pulled off the heist, stealing 13 pieces of art in 81 minutes....

Ortiz said the statute of limitations had expired on crimes associated with the actual theft. She said anyone who knowingly possessed or concealed the stolen art could still face charges, but said prosecutors were willing to discuss potential immunity deals to get the art back....

In the meantime, empty frames hang on the walls of the museum, a reminder of the "enormous loss" and a symbol of hope that they will be recovered, said Ortiz. The stolen paintings include: The Concert by Johannes Vermeer; and three Rembrandts, A Lady and Gentleman in Black, Self-Portrait and Storm on the Sea of Galilee, his only seascape.

I'm glad to hear this art may be returned, but I can't help noting that name: Carmen Ortiz. Here's someone who may be desperate for good publicity after getting trashed earlier this year.

Bloodhounds, beagles, and a ferret search mobster's backyard for famous paintings.

The paintings by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Degas and Manet are worth more than a half-billion dollars.

The mobster's wife says "They’re treating him like a dog." A dog. Not a ferret.

A neighbor said that if Gentile had buried a half-billion-dollar’s worth of art in his backyard, “there would have been scuttlebutt... Things get around, no matter how tight lipped you are.”

Here's some background on that art heist (which happened in 1990):

Investigators believe the first nabbed was Rembrandt's iconic "Storm on the Sea of Galilee," measuring about 5-by-4 feet and dating to 1633. The frame was laid on the floor where one of the thieves neatly sliced it from its frame.

Next was "Landscape with an Obelisk" by Govaert Flinck. Other stolen masterpieces included a second Rembrandt also cut from its frame, "A Lady and Gentleman in Black" from 1633.

The most valuable piece was Vermeer's "The Concert," an oil painting measuring about 2 1/2-by-2 feet from 1660 - one of only 36 known works by the Dutch master and valued at more than $250 million...

A Rembrandt self-portrait from 1629 - one of the museum's most valuable paintings - was removed from the wall, but then left untouched while one of the crooks patiently unscrewed and removed from its frame a tiny Rembrandt etching slightly larger than a postage stamp....

After the heavier works of art were removed from the walls, the thief in charge - possibly the older of the two - might have let the other thief take what he wanted.

Amore believes the second thief found his way to a nearby gallery, lifting smaller Degas drawings of horses while passing up more valuable works of art including one by the Italian painter Botticelli.

The thieves also tried to remove a flag of Napoleon's First Regiment from its frame before giving up and making off with a bronze finial in the shape of an eagle from atop the flag - ignoring more valuable letters with Napoleon's signature.

Then came a final puzzle.

The thieves found their way to a gallery on the first floor, again passing more valuable works of arts, to seize a "Chez Tortoni," a Manet painting of a man in a top hat and a departure from the Dutch paintings - all without triggering a motion detector.

"If we ever speak to the thieves, which is secondary, I would like to say, 'Why did you take that? Why did you pass by the Raphael?'" Amore said.

"In her luminous memoir..."

I thought the memo had gone out that the word "luminous" had been banned from book reviews:

Several years ago, overwhelmed by the flood of material unleashed annually by the publishing industry, I decided to establish a screening program by purchasing only books that at least one reviewer had described as ''astonishing.''

Previously, I had limited my purchases to merchandise deemed ''luminous'' or ''incandescent,'' but this meant I ended up with an awful lot of novels about bees, Provence or Vermeer. The problem with incandescent or luminous books is that they veer toward the introspective, the arcane or the wise, while I prefer books that go off like a Roman candle. When I buy a book, I don't want to come away wiser or happier or even better informed. I want to get blown right out of the water by the author's breathtaking pyrotechnics. I want to come away astonished.

That's Joe Queenan, writing in the New York Times in 2007, but now here's the New York Times with its 10 Best Books of 2009, calling a memoir "luminous." How can I trust their judgment? To be fair, they didn't call anything "incandescent" or "astonishing."

The chalk artist.

Drawing a face and drawing a crowd, on Library Mall today:



One hand keeps the Vermeer reproduction secure on the sidewalk, and the other hand works the lipstick-red chalk into the Hollywoodsy collagen-lips.



I can't explain the cowboy.

ADDED: I don't know if this is the same guy I photographed back in 2004 at the "9 Beet Stretch":

The Amsterdam Notebooks—Page 23.

It's Day 19 of this 35 day project. (The set thus far.) Inside the Rijksmuseum, I draw details from two paintings by Vermeer.

"The Milkmaid":



"The Love Letter":