This detailed group portrait by Holbein is described in the screenshot that follows.

Entering the house, you meet the family hanging up. You see them painted life-size before you meet them in the flesh; and More, conscious of the double effect it makes, pauses, to let you survey them, to take them in. The favourite, Meg, sits at her father's feet with a book on her knee. Gathered loosely about the Lord Chancellor are his son John; his ward Anne Cresacre, who is John's wife; Margaret Giggs, who is also his ward; his aged father, Sir John More; his daughters Cicely and Elizabeth; Pattinson, with goggle eyes; and his wife Alice, with lowered head and wearing a cross, at the edge of the picture. Master Holbein has grouped them under his gaze, and fixed them for ever: as long as no moth consumes, no flame or mould or blight.

He is conscious of an oddity, as if time has performed some loop or snared itself in a noose; he has seen them on the wall as Hans froze them, and here they enact themselves, wearing their various expression of aloofness or amusement, benignity and grace: a happy family. He prefers their host as Hans painted him; the Thomas More on the wall, you can see that he's thinking, but not what he's thinking, and that's the way it should be. The painter has grouped them so skilfully that there's no space between the figures for anyone new. The outsider can only soak himself into the scene, as an unintended blot or stain; certainly, he thinks, Gardiner is a blot or stain. The Secretary waves his black sleeves; he argues vigorously with their host. What does St Paul mean when he says Jesus was made a little lower than the angels? Do Hollanders ever make jokes? What is the proper coat of arms of the Duke of Norfolk's heir? Is that thunder in the distance, or will this heat keep up? Just as in the painting, Alice has a little monkey on a gilt chain. In the painting it plays about her skirts. In life, it sits in her lap and clings to her like a child. Sometimes she lowers her head and talks to it, so that no one else can hear.

A pair of lush paragraphs from the midpoint of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall:

Is a woman bound to wifely obedience, when the result will be to turn her out of the estate of wife? He, Cromwell, admires Katherine: he likes to see her moving about the royal palaces, as wide as she is high, stitched into gowns so bristling with gemstones that they look as if they are designed less for beauty than to withstand blows from a sword. Her auburn hair is faded and streaked with grey, tucked back under her gable hood like the modest wings of a city sparrow. Under her gowns she wears the habit of a Franciscan nun. Try always, Wolsey says, to find out what people wear under their clothes. At an earlier stag life this would have surprised him; he had thought that un their clothes people wore their skin.

. . . Wolsey cannot imagine a world without Wolsey. 'Ah well. You know I would prefer you to his service, and never hold you back, but the difficulty is ..?' Putney, he means. It is the stark fact. And since he's not a churchman, there are no ecclesiastical titles to soften it, as they have softened the stark fact of Ipswich. I wonder,' Wolsey says, would you have patience with our sovereign lord? When it is midnight and he is up drinking and giggling with Brandon, or singing, and the day's papers not yet signed, and when you press him he says, I'm for my bed now, we're hunting tomorrow ... If your chance comes to serve, you will have to take him as he is, a pleasure-loving prince. And he will have to take you as you are, which is rather like one of those square-shaped fighting dogs that low men tow about on ropes.Not that you are without a fitful charm, Tom.' The idea that he or anyone else might come to have Wolsey's hold over the king is about as likely as Anne Cromwell becoming Lord Mayor. But he doesn't altogether discount it. One has heard of Jeanne d'Arc; and it doesn't have to end in flames. He goes home and tells Liz about the fighting dogs. She also thinks it strikingly apt. He doesn't tell her about the fitful charm, in case it's something only the cardinal can see.

. . . Richard Williams, Kat's boy, is sharp, keen and forward. Christopher, his sister Bet's boy, is clever and willing too. And then he has Rafe Sadler, whom he trusts as he would trust his son; it's not a dynasty, he thinks, but it's a start. And quiet moments like this are rare, because his house is full of people every day, people who want to be taken to the cardinal. There are artists looking for a subject. There are solemn Dutch scholars with books under their arms, and Lübeck merchants unwinding at length solemn Germanic jokes; there are musicians in transit tuning up strange instruments, and noisy conclaves of agents for the Italian banks; there are alchemists offering recipes and astrologers offering favourable fates, and lonely Polish fur traders who've wandered by to see if someone speaks their language; there are printers, engravers, translators and cipherers; and poets, garden designers, cabalists and geometricians. Where are they tonight? 'Hush,' Liz says. 'Listen to the house.' At first, there is no sound. Then the timbers creak, breathe. In the chimneys, nesting birds shuffle. A breeze blows from the river, faintly shivering the tops of trees. They hear the sleeping breath of children, imagined from other rooms. 'Come to bed?’ The king can't say that to his wife. Or, with any good effect, to the woman they say he loves.

One of my beloved rituals is to read certain books during the winter holidays. Here’s one of them.

Please enjoy a few choice bits and pieces from one of my favorite novels, Hilary Mantel’s “Wolf Hall”:

In every society built on patriarchal norms, abuse of children and women abound.

Brookies are tricky. The proportion of -ookie to bro- should be 1:3. Dark chocolate works magic when mixed with a smidge of crushed chocolate coated espresso beans.

Finally, a partial swap of our usual suspects with the two browns: butter and sugar—add unexpected depth.

And Mexican vanilla? ¡Si!

Yes, they do! 😆

HOORAY! 🥂

(Thank you. 🥰)

🌈 Y’all know Obamacare/The Health Exchange is only a teensy portion of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), right? #health #wellness #HealthcareIsAHumanRight

www.hhs.gov/healthcare/a...

A person in a green utility kilt wearing a Darth Vader shirt and helmet. Is riding a bicycle on a bridge. They are playing a bagpipe with flames coming out of the pipes. It is not an AI image. It is the well known Portland Unipiper.

It's 0030. You've been on guard duty since 1800 in war torn portland. You are bored out of your mind as the soft rain falls on your poncho somehow soaking upwards.

Then a faint drone begins in the distance. Getting louder and louder as you strain to identify friend or foe.

The Unipiper cometh

EM, I’ve learned so much from your explorations on all kinds of self-care. Please continue. ❤️🥳

So perfect. 🥳

*opaque (≠ oblique)

You’re absolutely right. It’s a scattershot movement under an oblique banner.

Bam Bam smokes? 😳

Good grief, that’s good.

People in this country work long hours for little pay and live in constant debt, one paycheck away from being in the street because we have few protections from hypercapitalism and its cultic appeal amongst the upper classes.

US schools teach American mythology—not history.

For three years after the 2016 election, I literally taught actual factual American history to my peers and betters on FB from my sickbed.

They were *so shocked,* Mike, yet so determined to learn and ask questions.

Mike, please be conscious of the fact that actual people live in America.

Our government and corporations spent the last 150 years (and more) making horrific choices without our consent (or awareness) on the international stage. >>

*Painting by artist-illustrator Naoko Machida, whose work you can see here:

www.instagram.com/naoko.machid...

No new pictures, where are you at mentally?

(This, but also. . . )*

My goodness. What’s the oldest?

How glorious. 🥰

Yes! I’ll take a picture of the rocks in my front walk. Such a bloody nuisance!

Thank you for mentioning hiking poles. I may need them—or something—in the near future. I lost a ton of muscle mass in the last two years. It’s very annoying, GB, but we persevere.

The uneven rocks in front of my house also need to be changed out with pea gravel. I’ve taken a header four times this year already.

OMG. That sounds magical. The five inch platform chanclas I used to wear around the house got chucked because Rocket Dog changed the thong webbing to something cheap and stretchy. You have no idea how grateful I am to have bendy ankles from decades of dancing. But still—the falling! Oy.

¡Sí! ¿Con pollo?

How the criminal case against Texas AG Ken Paxton abruptly ended after nearly a decade of delays The securities fraud case against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is over after nine years. He will stay in office under an agreement announced in a Houston courtroom on Tuesday.

Paxton is such a pissant. Here’s an overview of his actual crimes since taking office in 2015.

apnews.com/article/paxt...

Waaaooow! Wombat scat!

That looks GORGEOUS. Is the bit about walking a joke or do you own some sort of magical walking shoes? Asking for a friend who’s been falling a lot lately. 😬