Whenever I think of the teaching of Jesus I am reminded of historical crusades it inspired — of William Lloyd Garrison and abolitionism, of Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement in the United States. I think of Tolstoy’s astounding The Kingdom of God Is Within You, the Sermon on the Mount-inspired treatise of nonviolent resistance that, coupled with the New Testament, informed Mohandas Gandhi’s satyagraha.

The example of Jesus’ life is one of humility, non-judgment, self-sacrifice, forgiveness, and divine love. “Love your enemies,” he commands. “Do good to those who would harm you.” He loses his temper only once: When the religious leaders of his time turn his Father’s house into the profiteering parody of a place of worship, he tosses the moneychangers out of the temple. From the cross, where his running afoul of those religious leaders led, he did not rain fire down from heaven, but pled on their behalf for mercy.

How any of his life and teaching gets twisted into a law condemning practicing homosexuals to death by hanging is beyond me. I am completely mystified.

Must be the same teaching that permits televangelists to exploit poor believers as they enrich themselves and build media empires on Jesus’ broken back, or the teaching that coopts the utterly apolitical Jesus and turns him into a spokesperson for Conservative Republicans (or Liberal Democrats, for that matter).

Clearly, though, a license to hate is far more palatable to humans than a gospel of love. Today I’ve learned nothing new. If anything, I am more confused than ever.

We went to Barnes and Noble to look at books and magazines, but mainly to get away from the house for a bit. Classics on the cheap: How long has it been since I read A Tale of Two Cities? Or Heart of Darkness?

Later we walked around the mall. When my knees tired we sat together on a bench and I took random photos of shoppers’ feet.

“Why are you taking pictures of feet?” she asked.

“For a blog entry today,” I replied.

“Did you learn something here?” she wondered.

“Yes.”

“What was it?”

“Women in Dallas must have a body shop that sprays on their jeans.”

“No,” she offered. “It’s just how they wear them. It looks uncomfortable.”

Shoehorn, I thought. But I didn’t say it out loud. My mind turned left and I thought of guillotines and the best and worst of times.

Image by me taken at the Parks Mall in Arlington, Texas. Select to enlarge.

This afternoon, knowing the carpet would be vacuumed once our Christmas tree was packed away, I sprinkled some loose catnip in a sunbeam so our cat Tommy might play in it. For a while ran, rolled, sniffed and munched the fragrant herb, then he settled into a warm spot and slept. His sleek form was a study in light and shadow, one I could not properly capture on film, no matter how filled the dark areas with flash.

I’ve been engrossed by the play of light since I first started seriously drawing at age eight and began representing things as three-dimensional. I studied a number of art books and carefully read everything I could about how light functioned.

Of all my resources, one of the best was not an art book, but a scientific treatise: Isaac Newton’s Opticks. The volume has been faithfully reproduced in all its permutations and combinations at The Newton Project, now my favorite site devoted to the physicist. As the opening says, “Our interactive diplomatic transcriptions show all the additions, deletions and other changes that Newton made to his texts.

In other words, it’s a lot like watching a great mind at work, editing and shaping thought as Newton works through his theories. Fascinating stuff.

Drawing of Isaac Newton as a geometer was created in 1995 by William Blake. Image via Wikipedia.

Call it a New Year’s resolution if you will, but I’m determined to feature one new thing I discover — either through meat space wandering or on the Web — every day of 2010. Today it’s a combination of the two.

From the time I was a boy sitting rapt-faced before Roy Rogers shorts at the movie theater, I’ve been fascinated by tales of the American West. Though the myths and legends might have changed as I got older, one constant remained. Paintings and statues of Frederic Remington and Charles Russell accurately documented the turn-of-the-century world of real cowboys and Indians. So when I moved from Tennessee to the Dallas/Ft. Worth area, one of the first places I visited was the Amon Carter Museum. As the organization’s Web site says, “nowhere else can a visitor see and compare so many masterpieces by these two artists.” From sketches to personal correspondence to detailed paintings to bronzes, the Carter’s Remington and Russell collection is a must-see for aficianado’s of Zane Grey’s Old West.

Shutterbugs will also find a treasure trove at the Carter. The museum houses over 30,000 photographic prints, making it “one of the country’s major repositories of American photography.” On a recent visit, I found work by Ansel Adams and the great Alfred Stiegliz. Those prints alone were well worth the price of admission (free, by the way).

Visitors to Dallas/Ft. Worth should include the Amon Carter in their itinerary. They won’t be disappointed.

Image: “The Bronco Buster” by Frederic S. Remington. Click photo to enlarge.

In an ideal world such a notion would be de rigueur, a matter of course; but in a world where success has everything to do with profit and nothing to do with integrity, Scribners is sucking every bit of marrow it can drain from the corpse of Hemingway. I hope dismal sales will remind them of their trust, but my cynicism believes curiosity seekers and train wreck followers will make the publication profitable. More’s the pity. Scribners should be punished, not fiscally rewarded, for their desecrating Hemingway’s work.

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Tom Wilkes, who created some of the most memorable images of my youth, died June 28 in the high desert east of Los Angeles at age 69 of a heart attack. I learned of it today, reading his New York Times obituary. For years his artwork adorned album covers and poster art, one of the best popular galleries of the late ’60s and early ’70s. With his passing I am more than ever reminded I miss not only the warm intimacy of popping, crackling analog music on vinyl, but also the artistic forum 12-inch long-playing album covers provided.

Wilkes’ covers include work for Janis Joplin, Ringo Starr, Neil Young, George Harrison, and The Gap Band. His cover for The Rolling Stones’ Beggar’s Banquet, featuring a graffitied wall in a seedy restroom, was considered too controversial, and was initially rejected by the the band’s record label. Hard to imagine in today’s show-and-tell-all world.

I’m certain I’ve posted this video a number of times elsewhere; I suppose I hope it will find someone who appreciates it as much as I do. These are consummate professional musicians playing a brilliant jazz tune before an appreciative crowd in Montreaux and enjoying themselves as they do. In my book, music doesn’t get much better.

Seconds later, drifting through the open window and rising higher and higher in the late afternoon sky, I prayed the neighbor kid playing with his BB gun below me was a lousy shot.

–David Pogue in his New York Times blog, “Pogue’s Posts,” “Some E-Books Are More Equal Than Others.” All I can say is un-freaking-believable. If I ever needed a last nail in the coffin of Kindle, this is it. There’s no way I would own one.