Catching up on my oook-learning, I found this little doorway into a secret garden where the inside is much larger than the outside.

Hugh Blackmer’s Nova Scotia Faces collection is a marvelous primer in close observation and the delicately timed articulation of commentary. If one wants to teach close reading and distinguish that art from the deadening habit of paraphrase, Hugh’s work here would be a great place to go.

He says he’s in no hurry with this project, but as one of the World’s Most Impatient Men I hope he won’t dawdle too long in his splendid New England otium.

I don’t mean to be greedy or gluttonous. No, that’s wrong: they’re exactly what I mean to be. More please!