Quote of the Day (Rutina Wesley of ‘True Blood,’ on Turning Into a Vampire)

“When I was turned into a vampire [as character Tara], Anna [Paquin] couldn’t keep a straight face. When she saw my fangs, she burst out laughing. I was like, ‘Stop it! You got to be serious! I’m coming out of the grave!’”—Rutina Wesley of True Blood, quoted in “Party Lines,” New York Magazine, June 30-July 13, 2014

Quote of the Day (Evelyn Waugh, on Heaven, Humans and Horrors)

“The human mind is inspired enough when it comes to inventing horrors; it is when it tries to invent a heaven that it shows itself cloddish."—Evelyn Waugh, Put Out More Flags (1942) 

Photo of the Day: St. James Cathedral, Seattle

This past Sunday, while on a business trip to Seattle, I walked up the First Hill section of the city to attend 8 am Mass at St. James Cathedral. When it was dedicated in 1907, it certainly fulfilled Bishop Edward J. O’Dea’s charge to the architects that they design a structure "that must surpass anything in the West."

Even by virtue of its placement on this hill, the cathedral lifts parishioners and visitors out of their everyday realm.  Inside, the Renaissance style employed by architects Heins and LaFarge (who created the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City) does much the same—the result not just of the original design, but also of renovations in 1916, 1950 and 1994.

Quote of the Day (Richard Hofstadter, on Paranoid Politics and ‘Facts’)

“One of the impressive things about paranoid literature is the contrast between its fantasied conclusions and the almost touching concern with factuality it invariably shows. It produces heroic strivings for evidence to prove that the unbelievable is the only thing that can be believed.”— Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics (1964)

Quote of the Day (Cora Frazier, With a New Twist on an Old Romance)

“He was a knight in King George’s court. She was an orphan peasant who lived in an abandoned mill.

“In the early morning, when she went to leave, the door to the parapet was stuck, and he had to use a power drill to get it open.”—Cora Frazier, “New Harlequin Titles,” The New Yorker, Oct. 19, 2015

Photo of the Day: ‘Abstract Sophisti-Cat,’ Leonia NJ

Earlier this month, I photographed this work by the German-born artist Herrat Sommerhoff in the Erika and David Boyd Sculpture Garden in Leonia, not far from where I live in Bergen County, NJ.