Sapphire and Steel and SOAS

Bill and I have been watching the Old British show "Sapphire and Steel" I never watched it growing up, I didn't find out about it until I was 14 and my best friend Kate told me it was her favorite show. Looking back though I proably would never have been allowed to watch it as it dealt with "ghosts", I wasn't even allowed to watch rent-a-ghost. But now I'm enjoying it immensley. At first it was very hard to get used to Joanna Lumley playing anyone that wasn't Patsy but I managed, her voice is much softer as Sapphire and I think that helped, along with her being 15 years younger! But the shows not nearly as cheesy as I would have expected, title credits nonewithstanding. I was expecting something on the level of doctor who, which I can't understand why americans like. Dr. Who at least for me, is something I like cause I remember watching it as a child and hiding behind the settee and all that, not something to be taken seriously by grown ups. But I digress. The fact that there are so little special effects makes it less dated, the simplicity works well for the show, being stuck in one location while the evil forces are trying to invade and destroy you. I also enjoy the banter, it often makes me laugh at the dry wit of the two main characters, and how even thought they're there to save lives humans individualy mean so little to them. So far my favorite adventure has been episode 2 where they ended up saving the day by offering a human sacrifice to the evil blackness that had been invading.

As far as school goes, I've just gotten email back from the registar saying that I can use my boss as a reference for my scholarship instead of having to hunt down one of my old Evergreen professors. This makes me immensly happy. As while I did well at Evergreen, I did have differences with a couple of the professors, and wouldn't look forward to the big time consuming prospect of trying to track them down, make them remember me, and then convince them to write something good. My boss on the other hand loves me. She told me that when she was writing her initial recommendation for me for my application she kept having to go back and rewrite it as it ended up being far too long! It's nice when your boss has so many good things to say about you! Now I just need to figure out what to say about myself! Looking over the application the statement says why you wish to take the program, which shouldn't be that hard as I can use a lot of my initial application, just try and talk myself up more. (In a proper nice academic sounding way, not like I did just now!)

My goodness, it's now 3am, must get back to reading!

Landscape Paintings

Tonight I read The Art of Chinese Landscape Painting that I bought this weekend. The book is part of an "Art of the World" series from the 60's so was a little dated but nice nonetheless. I love Chinese landscape paintings and have been trying to find a book about them for the past few months. So I was very excited when I picked up this book, then I started to read closer I found it wasn't so much a book about landscape painting but was a look at landscape painting at the Dun Huang caves. The Dun Huang caves, over hundreds of them, have been a place for Buddhist art from the Han dynasty down through time. Dun Huang is in the North West of China and was one of the key stops on the silk road so shows clearly and interesting mixture of Chinese and foreign influences. A huge number of ancient manuscripts were also found hidden in one of the caves but that's another story.

The book ended up being half way between a history of landscape paintings and a look at the Dun Huang art. The history, dynasty by dynasty was a nice brief introduction to the development of landscape painting, what was used then. The author was also very good at introducing the philosophical and religious nature of the paintings and the ideas behind them.

The plates came mainly from the Dun Huang caves. Some were truly breathtaking and gorgeous. Each was also carefully analyzed for technique and content. Showing the development of different ideas and themes. The only problem was that some of the paintings, either due to degradation of the paintings themselves, or the poor quality of the pictures were a little hard to decipher. But overall very interesting. I'm guessing there's a more modern book out there with more complete pictures and greater descriptions but this was definitely a good book to have while I'm waiting for that.