Note 1:
I teach over at Weston Hall from 10-11, and then near the Quadrangle at noon.  Monday in that hour between classes, I wandered about in the Krannert Art Museum, which is a favorite of mine.  Just the right size for a bit of quiet and restorative contemplation.  I happened to have my camera with me, and snapped a few pictures, including this one from perhaps Belgium around 1534.  Fashionably straightedge, this Protestant-looking fellow seems to have been a prosperous and sober Burgher.  But you have to love the little flower (and what kind of flower is it?) that he holds delicately in his pursed and almost folded hands.  What, you have to wonder, is the story here?  It that a smile on his face?  Was he chided into holding the flower by the artist or a wife or a favored ladyfriend?  Or did he himself insist on it, despite the polite surprise of the portrait artist and the flowerless paintings other solid citizens of his class?

And art historian might be able to help with this  (Are many other such portraits posed this way?), but I do not know about this person or this painting.  This charming, prosperous, and pleasantly unknown Mona Lisa.

Note 2:
But of course if you were to ask the wrong art historian, you might just end up more confused.  The Krannert center has one of its very own limewood devotional images.  (The stone-like statues that Michael Baxandall wrote about in his Limewood Sculptors, that were hunted down by the Reformation iconoclasts who sprung up in the same natural range as these Germanic religious images.)

Anyhow, the Krannert Limewood sculpture is a pretty typical Madonna and Child.  However when we look at the statue (disturbingly happy Jesus, btw) and the museum tag that describes it, we are perhaps reminded that not all art historians are created equal.

I’m not generally the biggest participant in blog tagging things; however I was interested to discover the Tanaka Park Blog, containing info about the continued survival and and indeed  flourishing of Anne T. and Stewart P., ex-denizens of C-U.  Also very nice pictures of Sydney, who is the cuteness as well as a budding artistic power.

So the tag meme is a sort of general “four things” one, which I will answer pretty much straight-up:

Four jobs I’ve had: Shoe Salesman, Newspaper Salesman, Medical File Guy, Lit teacher.

Four movies I can watch over and over: Fargo, Gattaca, Moulin Rouge, Kill Bill, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen

Four places I’ve lived: Palatine IL; Chicago, IL; Aberystwyth, Wales; and beautiful Champaign, IL

Four TV shows I love: History Detectives; Futurama.  Frontline.  That’s it, I think.  I often also watch the McLaughlin Group on PBS, and various late-night talk shows with which I have ambivalent relationships.

Four places I’ve vacationed: Washburn County, Wisconsin (many times); Disney World (Hooray for Epcot Center!);  Brasov, Transylvania.  Rome.  I’m not sure though what counts exactly as a vacation. 

Four of my favorite foods:  Hmm.  Not sure on this.  I have a weakness for chocolate-chip cookies (those Famous Amos ones are pretty good, as store-bought ones go) and any Italian Tomato-based cooking (my Mom’s pizza is a sentimental favorite).  I like things that include mushrooms or spinach or rhubarb (but not all at once?).  Truthfully my diet is so horrible that I fall on my knees in appreciation for almost anything that doesn’t come from a can or a microwave.  Also notable: I’m allergic to fish (though not seafood in general) and cannot seem to eat poultry either.  Which is bad since until three or four years ago I basically survived on chicken.

Four sites I vist daily:  Hmm.  Well, thisdarkqualm is full of interesting insight.  What else would I need?

Four places I would rather be right now: Hmm.  Well ones I can say?  Salisbury or Winchester Cathedral.  Or a good show somewhere.  Hanging out with most of the handful of folks who read this here blog, or with my family who has been so uncivilly excluded from this space.  Hearing the words “congratulations” (or alternately: “My God, your brilliant work has changed my life!”) at the end of of my dissertation defense.

Four bloggers I am tagging: nobody.  Because I am bad.  Or everyone who reads this—because I am good.