Greetings, People of Earth! Now, look- everything is on fire or at some stage of being dismantled, I know I know. So instead of feeling defeated, I think we should talk about cats and dogs and pleasant things. I mean, we have to make a living, so watching netflix cocooned in a blanket fort all day is rather out of the question for most of us. That said, let’s look at some lovely things!
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Photographer Walter Chandoa has amassed quite the archive of images of felines. No doubt you’ve seen a number of his photographs. Now there is a book paying tribute to his work.
A New Book Compiling Hundreds of Timeless Feline Photos by Walter Chandoha is the Cat’s Meow
A new book chronicles over seventy-five years of photographer Walter Chandoha’s images of cats. Around 1950, Chandoha found a kitten outside in the winter snow. The black bengal cat, who he adopted and named Loco…started the photographer’s affinity for documenting cats, which continued for the rest of his life. The New York-based photographer, who passed away earlier this year, was quite prolific. His archive contains over 225,000 photos, including about 90,000 of his feline friends. Hundreds of these charming, often candid photographs are compiled in a new 296-page book published by Taschen, with writing and editing by Susan Michals and Reuel Golden, respectively. The book was released on August 12, 2019, and is available online.
Please enjoy this scroll of his work and certainly you might want to ponder for whom this might make a great gift.
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41 Strange tweeted this picture. That’s it. Just a picture. Not anything about the calligrapher or archivist who found the evidence of the deed and probably fainted away.
Cat Paw Prints Found on 15th-Century Manuscript
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As for our canine friends, they too are getting the coffee-table-book treatment.
National Geographic Wildlife Photographer Documents Domestic Dogs in His Book ‘The Year of the Dogs’
“Legendary National Geographic photographer Vincent J Musi, who is known for his spectacular wildlife images, decided to take a year off from traveling the world to spend a year at home with his teenage son. During that time, Musi discovered a love for photographing more domestic subjects, namely dogs and even opened up a dog portrait studio during that year in his South Carolina hometown.”
The scroll of pups is enough to make a person hop over to Vincent’s instagram for more doggie faces.
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The folks at Mental Floss report that there are:
25 Benefits of Adopting a Rescue Dog
According to the ASPCA, 3.3 million dogs enter shelters each year in the United States. Although this number has decreased from 3.9 million in 2011, there are still millions of dogs waiting in shelters for a forever home. If you’re considering adding a new furry friend to your family, look for pet boarding facilities to assist with their care. Here are 25 benefits of adopting a shelter dog.
The article begins with “1. Adopting a dog means you won’t be supporting puppy mills.” and proceeds through the next 24 points that are no real surprise but the picture are very nice and it feels good to think that there are people out there dedicated to rescue. And I’m all about the lovely today so there.
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Unless there is some out-of-the-ordinary bad memory attached to it, I don’t know how an article on breakfast could be anything but a reverie on comfort food you love and the Proustian memory it conjures.
Herewith, Emily Elyse Miller’s breakfast book:
Around the World in 380 Breakfasts
A cookbook devoted to morning meals showcases chocolate-fish porridge, ice-cream brioche, and more.
“Breakfast doesn’t always lend itself to adventurousness—getting out the door in the morning can be hard enough. But Emily Elyse Miller’s recently published Breakfast: The Cookbook rejects that idea entirely. Miller, who runs glamorous breakfast events and, according to her website, is an “internationally renowned authority on breakfast,” sees the morning meal as more than just fuel. “Breakfast,” she writes in the book’s introduction, “is often hastily thrown together or eaten on the go, yet it is a meal steeped in tradition and rituals.””
YUMMMM!
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I don’t know if I’m being needlessly dismissive, but I can’t feel anything but amusement at this next bit. The NULL dude was in the news so Wired took that and ran with it. Please to enjoy!
A Brief History of Vanity License Plates Gone Wrong
“This week, Wired looked into the plight of Joseph Tartaro, a security researcher whose NULL vanity license plate at one point had him on the hook for $12,049 in fines. The problem? Apparently every time a traffic cop wrote a ticket and left the license plate blank, those citations headed straight for Tartaro’s mailbox, regardless of the actual culprit.”
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Here’s my nod to the intersection of science and art so I don’t get called to the principal’s office…
Just when you think there might not be any more Da Vinci surprises that can be wrung out of historical finds…
Da Vinci’s Secret Underdrawings In ‘Virgin Of The World’ Found After 500 Years
“500 years after the death of Leonardo da Vinci, art lovers are only beginning to scratch the surface of his creative process. A new discovery sees incredible underdrawings in the polymath’s The Virgin of the Rocks (about 1491/2-9 and 1506-8), allowing art lovers to view the piece with fresh eyes.”
Using new techniques like the use of macro X-ray fluorescence maps and hyperspectral imaging, the National Gallery of London is now able to visualize Da Vinci’s underdrawings more clearly. Through these methods, researchers were able to confirm that the artist sketched his drafts with a zinc-based pigment.”
If you can brave the annoying interstitials at Design Taxi, you’ll find this is an interesting article.
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And lastly, here’s an 11-minute video that’s more meditative than anything. That is, if you can resist the urge to hold your breath sympathetically which is kind of counter-productive.
Freediver Guillaume Néry urges us to: “Turn out the light, put your headphones and freedive with me around the world.” This video is an extraordinary visual experience—lush and hypnotic and just what you might need exactly right now.
Read more about Guillaume Néry and his wife and film partner Julie Gautier.
https://vimeo.com//335874600
https://vimeo.com/channels/bestofthemonth/335874600
https://vimeo.com/channels/bestofthemonth/335874600
