Reading List: Chlorine Gardens

December 9, 2019

I don’t have much time today (it was bound to happen) but I can still throw something out there as part of the reading list. We’re almost there. Tomorrow is Human Rights Day.

Chlorine Gardens
by Keiler Roberts

Dealing with pregnancy, child-rearing, art-making, mental illness, and an MS diagnosis, the parts of Chlorine Gardens’ sum sound heavy, but Keiler Roberts’ gift is the deft drollness in which she presents life’s darker moments. She doesn’t whistle past graveyards, but rather finds the punch line in the pitiful.

“If the Good Lord made me bipolar on purpose, it must be because he’s (she’s? they’re?) bipolar. That’s the only way to explain how consistently great and terrible His creations are. Now that I’ve figured that out, maybe I do believe in God. I can imagine creating cancer on my darkest day, and then the Grand Canyon to make up for it.”

art and fashion

Pellizza da Volpedo’s Masterpieces in Milan

I was able to catch this exhibition during its last few days, and I’m glad I did. Pellizza da Volpedo: i capolavori, hosted at the Galleria d’Arte Moderna (GAM) in Villa Reale, is a major retrospective dedicated to one of Italy’s most compelling painters between

January 23, 2026 9:00 am

books and literature

SciFi Friday — The Diamond Lens by Fitz-James O’Brien (1858) — Part 1

FROM a very early period of my life the entire bent of my inclinations had been toward microscopic investigations. When I was not more than ten years old, a distant relative of our family, hoping to astonish my inexperience, constructed a simple microscope for me

January 23, 2026 1:00 am

architecture, engineering and construction

What should NOT be in a name

Last week I wrote a litle thing on how a naming convention can help: The decision tree of this process was summarised as follows: It’s a touchy subject, I won’t pretend I didn’t know that, and there was an uprising of people objecting, trying to

January 21, 2026 9:00 am