The Fighting Temeraire by J.M.W. Turner
“The great battleship being towed up the Thames by a squat, steam-powered paddle-wheel tug. All the glory of the past is being dragged to oblivion beneath the cloud-haunted light of a setting sun. It is a picture that tells a story, and it is consistently voted Britain’s favorite painting.”
The fighting Temeraire
Built of a thousand trees,
Lunging out her lightenings,
And beetling o’er the seas
– Herman Melville, The Temeraire, 1866
“Never more shall sunset lay golden robe on her, nor starlight tremble on the waves that part at her gliding.”
– John Ruskin
(2) Why the Mind Sees the Future in the Past Tense
(2a) Less Than a Full-Service City
(3) When Clarity Isn’t a Virtue
*I generally start Saturday with a cup of coffee from Starbucks and a copy of the Wall Street Journal Saturday/Sunday edition AND what a rewarding endeavor. How else would a business graduate learn a word like uchronias?
Counterfactual worlds are known as uchronias—a variant of the word utopia (Greek for “no land”), substituting chronos (“time”) for topos (“land”).