On the last day of August, with school starting this week for many of us, it’s a good time to reflect on some summer lessons from the sea. I’m from the Ocean State, Rhode Island, with its miles of sandy beaches. I love going to the beach to swim, sun, and walk on the tide’s [...]
Author Archives: Judith Dupre
Books: A Love Story
August 17, 2010 – 4:10 pm
On a recent flight from Austin, I watched as my seatmate threw her bag in the overhead, snapped on her seat belt, and dove into a book. It was a well-loved copy of Memoirs of a Geisha, the mesmerizing tale of a fisherman’s daughter whose beautiful face and natural grace propels her to the upper [...]
Notes on a Book Cover
July 5, 2010 – 5:09 am
The reading public rarely suspects the blood, sweat, and tears that go into designing a book cover. Creating a cover that will entice bookstore browsers to pick up the book and visually convey its essence (in a glance) is ultimately more of an art than a science. The fine online journal Ancora Imparo ran the [...]
Luminous Transportations
April 10, 2010 – 1:03 pm
Luminous Transportations, installation by Jo Yarrington, Marquand Chapel, Yale Divinity School
Architect for Change
January 22, 2009 – 8:03 am
What a joy to attend the Inaugural. The frigid cold instantly gave everyone something in common–staying warm–and conspired with Obama’s message: We were one, and how! Everyone in that ocean of humanity knew that the stranger pressed up against us was a source of warmth. I’d say it was a good start.
Art and our common humanity
November 17, 2008 – 7:51 pm
Author Michael Chabon, a member of Obama’s Arts Policy Committee, describes the critical importance of the arts at this moment in our nation’s history: “Every grand American accomplishment, every innovation that has benefited and enriched our lives, every lasting social transformation, every moment of profound insight any American visionary ever had into a way
October 15, 2008 – 12:09 pm
Inspirational speaker Nicole Johnson uses my book, Churches, to deliver a powerful message of hope for everyone who feels invisible and taken for granted. I don’t know Nicole, but what she took away from Churches and how she brought the lessons of the Gothic cathedral builders to bear on today’s problems, blew me away. Watch, [...]
The I-35W Bridge!
September 15, 2008 – 4:45 pm
Building a bridge is a monumental undertaking, and there is something inherent in projects of this size and scope that makes people want to participate in their creation. In the case of the sleek, new I-35W crossing over the Mississippi that opened in Minneapolis this week, Twin City residents engaged in a day-long discussion that [...]
Amistad Returns
June 24, 2008 – 10:44 am
One thrill of the writing life is receiving pictures of one’s “babies” taken in faraway places. Bill Pinkney, the visionary behind the recreation of the Amistad schooner as a floating, living memorial to civil rights, presented a copy of Monuments, which tells Amistad’s story, to Josephine Kargbo of the Monuments and Relics Commission of Sierra [...]
Nick Benson Interview
November 6, 2007 – 6:28 am
A third-generation stone carver and calligrapher, Nick Benson (b. 1964) creates elegant hand-carved tombstones and architectural lettering for public buildings, memorials, and monuments. He owns and operates the John Stevens Shop, a historic stone carving establishment in Newport, Rhode Island. The shop was run by eight generations of Stevenses until 1927 when it was purchased [...]