In van Eyck’s lamb the forward looking eyes are those of a man being sacrificed. That simple combination is piercing. It draws you in. You can feel the pain.

In Dali’s “Last Supper” Christ’s hands are so super real they almost envelope you when you stand in front. Way back in 1965 I was led into the Gallery basement by a young woman friend who wanted to get my reaction to Dali’s then 10 year old painting. She distracted me until we were middle front and then had me look up. It was overwhelming! To appreciate it, and Dali, read the National Gallery website article.

Reminds me a bit of the Keane “Big Eyed” children and the scandal that it was the wife, not the husband, who painted them. She sued and won $4 mil plus the rights to the paintings.

https://artlyst.com/news/margaret-keane-kitsch-painter-big-eyed-children-dies-aged-94/

POTUS: “In a few short months, we’ve now achieved peace between India and Pakistan, Israel and Iran, and the DRC and Rwanda.”

Ceremony at the Oval Office.

https://x.com/Osint613/status/1938650652789326055

James Bacon writes, “The making of an intellectual monoculture at UVA”

Jim Ceaser retires, the breadth of intellectual light at UVA grows dimmer. So UVA can forget where it came from.

Ceaser launched the Program on Constitutionalism and Democracy two decades ago. The inspiration was Thomas Jefferson and James Madison’s 1818 “Rockfish Gap Report,” which advocated a curriculum to foster an “enlightened body of citizens for a liberal democracy” that came to be embodied in the University of Virginia.

Few professors at UVA’s political science department have an interest in political theory, much the less foundational theory of the 18th and 19th centuries, Ceaser observes. UVA political scientists today are data-oriented and focused on modern political structures. PCD fills the void. Its flagship courses include the American Political Tradition and American Political Economy. Students are exposed to thinkers ranging from John Locke and Adam Smith to Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton and, later in American history, Abraham Lincoln.

Were it not for the Program for Constitutionalism and Democracy, Ceaser says, “these courses would not be taught.”

“No one disputes that the Executive has a duty to follow the law.“

I do dispute this. Sometimes things need to happen faster than the law moves. Rule of law is also not a suicide pact. Can you say Lahaina?