Flora and Zephyr

Time for another of the beautiful Warwick Goble illustrations from the Chaucer book that I've been doling out. More to come.

'Flora and Zephyr Had Fixed Their Dwelling There'

Serial Batman - 1

Back in the mid-sixties there was a revival of sorts for the earliest serial adventures of Batman of the 40s, touring college campuses and such, as "an evening with Batman and Robin". That lead to the Batman TV show, which in turn lead to a tour of the second set of serials, the NEW Adventures of Batman and Robin, from 1949.

I remember on a cold and snowy early afternoon sometime in 1966, being dropped off by my dad at a run-down movie house where for only a couple bucks I watched ALL the Batman serials from both sets, and didn't get out until dark. I was saturated, of course, but it was fun.

I actually liked the cheesiness of the costumes and villains and the "Bats-Cave", because it seemed more realistic to me. In real life, how good could costumes really be, and how hard to be swinging around all the time. No, these guys climbed through the windows the hard way and got the crap beaten out of them in nearly every episode.

I watched some of these a couple of years ago on DVD with my daughter, and she and I enjoyed the episodes still, even though we laughed our way through them.

Serial Batman - 2

Macabrely Phantastic

A macabrely phantastic display of calligraphy, from the pen of Francesco Pisani of Genoa from the year 1640, when death was always near at hand.

Stunning

Thomas Blackshear II, a favorite artist of legions of fans, created this fabulous serigraph published by Greenwich Workshop. Just a stunning work of art.

Perelandra

Clive Staples Lewis, known to most of us as Narnia's creator C.S. Lewis, was an English man of letters who made theology entertaining. Besides the world of Narnia, he was famous for a little volume entitled The Screwtape Letters. Perhaps less famous, but most intriguing is his science fiction trilogy that is comprised of Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra and That Hideous Strength. Posted here is a vision of Perelandra, which is actually the planet Venus. And 'under its eternal mantle of clouds, he imagines it as a place of endless oceans, floating islands and diffused golden light. And the green woman his hero encounters there is not the Aphrodite of this watery world, but its Eve. A new Eve, confronted with temptation. In this exotically beautiful world of rippling, floating islands on vast warm seas, the forbidden act is to stay overnight on the fixed lands before an appointed time has come' — envisioned here, somewhat surrealistically in a painting by James Lewicki. As I say, most intriguing.

Neighborhood Watch

Just your average girl next door . . .

. . . by Chris Achilleos