Photo of the Day

Find something to hold on to.

It is 1917.

British sailors engaged in the Battle of Jutland, the largest naval battle of WWI.

More than sixty-five million men are serving as soldiers in a global war involving more than thirty nations.

British troops advance near Thiepval, during the Battle of the Somme, August 7, 1916.

Millions more are engaged in civilian support of their nation’s war efforts.

British armaments factory.

A refugee crisis of unseen dimensions is growing as war forces millions out of their homes.

Left: Polish refugees. Right: Muslim refugees from the Caucasus.

Atrocities against noncombatants have become commonplace.

Civilian damage in central London from a German aerial bombardment, September 1917.

These civilian attacks are justified as necessary to break the morale of the enemy, who is demonized in government sanctioned propaganda.

Passchendaele.

The worst of the world war in 1917 centers around the Belgian village of Passchendaele.

Both sides fighting there have been weakened in previous battles at the Somme, in Verdun and at Gallipoli.

And the Americans, who could break the stalemate, have not yet committed to the fight.

British gun crew stuck in the mud at Passchendaele.

This ongoing British offensive at Passchendaele will gain them little ground in the end.

But it will leave hundreds of thousands of casualties on both sides.

And while all of this was going on, Launcelot Cross pursued the study of old British sundials.

Sundials.

And it seems to have been more than mere hobby.

Launcelot engaged two illustrators and compiled a manuscript.

And he succeeded in convincing an Edinburgh publisher there was an audience for his book.

And it is charming.

Its colored plates are especially nice.

Drawing of an old Roman sundial.

But was Launcelot oblivious to the cataclysm then befalling his country?

And what of his readers?

Were they blind?

Or did they find the immersion in an obscure academic niche soothing?

We’ll never know.

Left: Construction of The British Museum’s Round Reading Room in London, completed in 1857. Right: archival photo of the completed room.

But right now, as so many of us — me included — fear for the future, clutching pearls with every breaking news story, many more people are busy thinking about other things.

Happily.

So, for us worriers, Launcelot might advise the deep study of something odd, yet beautiful.

It may be good advice.

With the nation falling into a dizzying spin, we all need to find something to hold on to.

‘Wild Bill’

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I’ll see you tomorrow.

— Brenda

Note: War photos from the Imperial War Museum, London. Book images from the New York Public Library.