Archives for December 17, 2019

From 2003:

I try not to fly at night, but this time I decided to give it a go, and at the end of 45 anxious minutes spent pushing through a cold front, our smaller-than-usual jet popped out of the clouds and started its descent into the New York area. Suddenly the once-invisible earth below me was lit by a million glittering pinpoints of copper, gold, and chilly blue-white. Not for the first time, I wondered why no painter has ever taken for his subject what one sees from the window of an airplane. Surely Whistler would have known what to do with the lights of a city, just as Constable might have reveled in the spectacle of clouds seen from above….

Read the whole thing here.

UPDATE: Yes, I now know about Yvonne Jacquette, whose work Mrs. T and I long to add to the Teachout Museum when we find just the right piece.

“There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.”

William James, The Principles of Psychology