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, installation by Jo Yarrington, Marquand Chapel, Yale Divinity School
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.
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
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, [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
From a distance it looks like a futuristic schooner, sails aloft, barely skimming the surface of the water as it crosses Tampa Bay. Compared as well to the strings of a harp or an open fan, the triangular plane of stays that support the sleek Sunshine Skyway Bridge are, however described, a triumph of engineering [...]
One Soldier’s Story is about my childhood neighbor, Rickey Caruolo, who was one of the first to die in the Vietnam War. It is a snapshot of a more innocent time in America and an intimate portrait of one soldier who stands in for all the great guys killed in Vietnam. Those who visit the [...]
