The Twelve Days of Christmas are over. But the Christmas season does not end officially until Candlemas, February 2nd. That leaves time to revel in images that have delighted me all of my life. The magic of their pictorial agility never flags. Their graphic intelligence—linear and compositional elegance, or what the old Italians called disegno—displays sensibilities that are rarely matched anymore in standard seasonal illustration. In part, that is because Christmas is no longer a spur, commercial or personal, to high imaginations. Continue Reading

The Patristic Institute Augustinianum wrote to correct me. There will be no conference of European cosmetic surgeons at the Vatican’s Patristic Institute Augustinianum. It was a hoax. And I fell for it. Mea maxima culpa. I am chagrined for having let myself be taken in. Now I really am blushing. I allowed my distaste for this grotesque pontificate to get the better of me.     Alexandros Bader does, indeed, practice cosmetic/aesthetic gynecology. The American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine, a controversial non-profit with an international membership, cites him as a “world class surgeon” who presents vaginal enhancement techniques to other surgeons and trainees at conferences and symposia around the globe. Continue Reading