I’ve added Dolen Perkins-Valdez’ blog URL to the list at the right. Dolen is a new colleague in the University of Mary Washington’s department of English, Linguistics, and Speech. Her scholarly specialty is African-American literature. With her kind consent, I am sharing her blog with you. If you need a better reason for visiting than “Gardner likes it”–and who wouldn’t?–I can tell you that her blog on the late Richard Avedon is very cool and presents some Avedon photos I’ve never seen. Two in particular amazed me: famed singer Marian Anderson (“force of nature” comes to mind here) and Marilyn Monroe (dressed up as silent film star Theda Bara–Madonna, eat your heart out).