All posts by Eric Robert Nolan

Eric Robert Nolan graduated from Mary Washington College in 1994 with a Bachelor of Science in Psychology. He spent several years a news reporter and editorial writer for the Culpeper Star Exponent in Culpeper, Virginia. His work has also appeared on the front pages of numerous newspapers in Virginia, including The Free Lance – Star and The Daily Progress. Eric entered the field of philanthropy in 1996, as a grant writer for nonprofit healthcare organizations. Eric’s poetry has been featured by Dead Beats Literary Blog, Dagda Publishing, The International War Veterans’ Poetry Archive, and elsewhere. His poetry will also be published by Illumen Magazine in its Spring 2014 issue.

“Lilith,” John Collier, 1892

Oil on canvas.

Lilith_(John_Collier_painting)

“The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free …”

“The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities.”

— Lord John Dalberg-Acton, The History of Freedom in Antiquity, 1877

 

Picture_of_John_Dalberg-Acton,_1st_Baron_Acton

Throwback Thursday: 1990’s Nerd Nolan!

This is from sometime in the late 1990’s.  I can’t remember which one of you guys sent me this photo, or its date.  But I’m running it primarily because of that old red t-shirt, which I loved so much that it nearly fell apart before I threw it out.

It was the “official” t-shirt of the Mary Washington College Department of Psychology, and I thought it was for one of the academic years I attended.  But … it looks like it says 1989-1990, and I feel like I even remember that.  (It’s a little hard to make out.)  I went to MWC just afterward, between 1990 and 1994.  I”m not sure what the story is here; maybe an upperclassman gave it to me?

The t-shirts were sold by psychology majors to raise funds for … something.  Was it a picnic at the end of the year, or a trip or something?  God, I’m getting old.

My only disappointment with that shirt was that I wore it for years without hearing a single relevant “Star Trek” joke.

 

 

10600428_826999383986591_9082224391642604604_n (2)

Illustration of mink in John Burroughs’ “Squirrels and Other Fur-bearers,” 1909

Houghton Mifflin Company.  I believe Burroughs is the artist.

I swear I’ve got these guys in my neighborhood.  Tuesday marked the third sighting for me.  Either what I am seeing are mink or another species that resemble them.  They’re a bit bigger than this picture would suggest — bigger than weasels, anyway.

 

Squirrels_and_other_fur-bearers_(Plate_10)_(6285658363)

“Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.”

“Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.”

— George Orwell, 1984

 

220px-George-orwell-BBC

Cover to “The Giving Tree,” Shel Silverstein, 1964

Harper Publishing.  The author is also the cover artist and interior illustrator.

The_Giving_Tree

“A Dog starv’d at his Master’s Gate/ Predicts the ruin of the State.”

A Robin Redbreast in a Cage
Puts all Heaven in a Rage.
A dove house fill’d with doves and pigeons
Shudders Hell thro’ all its regions.
A Dog starv’d at his Master’s Gate
Predicts the ruin of the State.
A Horse misus’d upon the Road
Calls to Heaven for Human blood.
Each outcry of the hunted Hare
A fiber from the Brain does tear.

— excerpt from William Blake’s “Auguries of Innocence”

 

V0021840 A hunting dog sitting with a game bird in its mouth. Wood en

“Every thing secret degenerates …”

“Every thing secret degenerates, even the administration of justice; nothing is safe that does not show how it can bear discussion and publicity.”

— Lord John Dalberg-Acton in an 1861 letter, published in Lord Acton and His Circle, 1906

 

Picture_of_John_Dalberg-Acton,_1st_Baron_Acton

Poster for “Black Mirror” episode “Crocodile” (S4E3), 2017

Netflix.

black_mirror

“Madness is terrific, I can assure you.”

“As an experience, madness is terrific I can assure you, and not to be sniffed at; and in its lava I still find most of the things I write about. It shoots out of one everything shaped, final, not in mere driblets, as sanity does.”

— Virginia Woolf, in a letter to Ethel Smyth

 

4c_woolf_1902