Eric LeStrange

Husband/Dad/Grandpa - Writer/poet, bookseller and gatherer, singer, history nut, and fan of peace

[Bob Maxon @bobmaxon]

This has to be one of the best photos I've ever received here at @NBCConnecticut. Betsy in Cheshire shared this with me. That's not a full moon....that's "earthshine" illuminating the moon. The moons of Jupiter are the small objects!!

[Dylan O'Sullivan @DylanoA4]

C. S. Lewis on why you NEED to read old books. This has never been more vital than it is today

[Michael Beschloss @BeschlossDC]

Mount Vernon in autumn at dusk, photographed by me 2021:

[Damian Peach🔭🪐 @peachastro]

Some really cool images of the Jupiter occultation by the moon on October 6th!

[Eric LeStrange @elestrange]

Classic WW2 in Europe military history: Crusade in Europe by Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1948 Edition hardcover https://t.co/iIB6RuXT04 #eBay via @eBay

[Eric LeStrange @elestrange]

@NotoriousVij @factpostnews who knows? Probably because it's a strong woman who survives torture from all men in her life

[Democrats @TheDemocrats]

If you live in the following states, TODAY is the last day to register to vote before the midterm elections:

Arizona
Arkansas
Florida
Georgia
Indiana
Kentucky
Mississippi
Ohio
Tennessee
Texas

Go to https://t.co/S7FhVVj9zP for more info.

[Vintage Maps @vintagemapstore]

How Far Did the Vikings Go? From Lindisfarne to America, 793–1021 🛶

[James Taylor @JamesTaylor_com]

After a September spent mostly on the road, this one's a reminder that there's no place like home.

Music: "September Grass" from the album October Road

#JT #JamesTaylor

[Cian McCarthy @arealmofwonder]

One of his greatest poems.

• Seamus Heaney •

[Eric LeStrange @elestrange]

@saintbvnny

[Sam Weller @Sam__Weller]

This is the most remarkable story Ray Bradbury ever shared with me. He told it late at nigh, sitting in his den of antiquities and mementos. Take five minutes to read this. It’s pure magic.

#Writing #Living #Creativity #RayBradbury #Book

[Impressions @impression_ists]

At 16, Signac was caught sketching Degas paintings at an exhibition.

Paul Gauguin physically threw him out, barking:

"We don't copy here, sir!"

When Georges Seurat died suddenly at 31, Pointillism almost died with him.

Paul Signac made sure it didn't.

Signac took Seurat's theories, but changed the execution:

Where Seurat was a studio scientist using dots, Signac was an outdoorsman who turned dots into strokes of color.

Seurat calculated light. Signac unleashed it.

A passionate sailor who owned 30 different boats, Signac sailed into an unknown fishing village called Saint-Tropez in 1892. He bought a house, set up his studio, and invited young painters like Henri Matisse to experiment with color.

Seurat invented the science. Signac kept it alive and handed the torch to modern art.

Underrated artist?

[James Lucas @JamesLucasIT]

This is not a photograph.

It’s called Oak Grove, and it was painted in 1887 by Ivan Shishkin. Every furrow of bark, every leaf, every blade of grass in the shade of these old oaks was put there by hand.

Shishkin painted trees so faithfully that his canvases are less like pictures of a forest and more like portraits of the trees themselves, each one rendered down to its smallest detail.

He spent his life wandering the woods near his home outside Saint Petersburg, studying nature so closely that Russia gave him a nickname: the singer of the Russian woods.

What I love most is that these oaks feel so alive, you can almost feel the coolness of their shade on your skin. And like very old trees in real life, they make you feel small in the best way possible, as if they have seen everything and are telling you that it will all be alright...

[World's Amazing Things @Hana_b30]

Wildlife photographer Alan Murphy caught the moment this Great Grey Owl turned its head and shattered its perfect camouflage..
Reminding us that the woods are never truly empty.

[Boze Herrington, Library Owl 😴🧙‍♀️ @SketchesbyBoze]

The fantasy genre did not begin with Tolkien. I strongly encourage you to read the books that inspired the works of your favorite authors. Reading Lord of the Rings led me to read the Kalevala, the Icelandic Sagas and Sir Gawain & the Green Knight. Reading Narnia led me to read Paradise Lost and The Faerie Queene. Reading Harry Potter led me to Agatha Christie, the Greek Tragedies and Dream of the Red Chamber. Many of these authors felt that their vocation was directing readers to great works of myth and poetry that were in danger of being forgotten. We honor their memories by reading the books that they loved.

[Team Talarico @TeamTalaricoHQ]

Ken Paxton deletes his tweet referring to Cypress, Texas as “Cyprus” after @JamesTalarico calls him out.

[Reads with Ravi @readswithravi]

Umberto Eco, who owned 50,000 books, had this to say about home libraries:

“It is foolish to think that you have to read all the books you buy, as it is foolish to criticize those who buy more books than they will ever be able to read. It would be like saying that you should use all the cutlery or glasses or screwdrivers or drill bits you bought before buying new ones.

“There are things in life that we need to always have plenty of supplies, even if we will only use a small portion.

“If, for example, we consider books as medicine, we understand that it is good to have many at home rather than a few: when you want to feel better, then you go to the ‘medicine closet’ and choose a book. Not a random one, but the right book for that moment. That’s why you should always have a nutrition choice!

“Those who buy only one book, read only that one and then get rid of it. They simply apply the consumer mentality to books, that is, they consider them a consumer product, a good. Those who love books know that a book is anything but a commodity.”

[James Lucas @JamesLucasIT]

I took this photo four years ago, standing right in front of it at the MoMA in New York, and nothing had prepared me for the real thing.

Seeing The Starry Night in person is still one of the most magical things art has ever done to me...

What a screen can never show you is the paint itself: Van Gogh squeezed it straight from the tube onto the canvas, building the sky in thick, raised ridges you can practically feel, so the stars and swirls stand up off the surface and catch the light as you walk by.

It's not just a picture of the night sky, it's a physical storm of paint, and standing before it, everything seems to move.

He made it in 1889, from the barred window of the asylum at Saint-Rémy, during one of the darkest moments of his life. He wrote to his brother Theo that the night was "more alive and more richly colored than the day," and once you have seen it with your own eyes, you understand exactly what he meant...

[James Lucas @JamesLucasIT]

This is not a photograph, and it's not an oil painting. It might be the most unbelievable watercolor ever made...

It's called Sommarnöje, which means something like Summer Delight, and Anders Zorn painted it in 1886. Look at the water, the gentle ripples, the reflections, the wet sheen of it, and then look at the two people, the fine detail of the wooden rowboat, the woman's white dress, the light on her face.

It has the near-photographic realism of an oil painting, and it was done in watercolor, a medium so unforgiving that a single wrong stroke ruins the entire piece.

Zorn painted this in the first summer of his marriage: the woman in white waiting on the pier is his new wife, Emma, whom he had married only months before. They had just come back from their honeymoon and were staying with her family at Dalarö near Stockholm, still looking for the home where they would spend their life. The man rowing toward her is their friend Carl Gustav Dahlström. It is a real moment from the happiest season of a young couple's life, caught and held forever.

In 2010 this single sheet of watercolor sold for twenty-six million Swedish kronor, over three million dollars, the highest price ever paid for a Swedish painting.

In his own lifetime, Zorn was celebrated above all for two things: his handling of light, and his ability to paint water. Sommarnöje is where you see exactly why...