Michael Chabon:

I find the continuing mission of Voyager 1 so moving, for the way its name alone evokes a time of promise, for the thought of that tiny contraption way out there in the vastness at the edge of the heliosphere  —  perhaps the farthest any human-made thing may ever travel  —  a bit battered, swiftly aging, still doing the work it was purposed to do. 

I feel exactly the same way, but also claim a self-description: I too am "a bit battered, swiftly aging, still doing the work [I] was purposed to do." 

Jacqueline Gerber's movie quiz on WCLV this morning focused on War and Peace. introductory remarks cited an Associated Press article noting that many students are no longer asked to read full-length novels:

In many English classrooms across America, assignments to read full-length novels are becoming less common. Some teachers focus instead on selected passages — a concession to perceptions of shorter attention spans, pressure to prepare for standardized tests and a sense that short-form content will prepare students for the modern, digital world. 

The National Council of Teachers of English acknowledged the shift in a 2022 statement on media education, saying: “The time has come to decenter book reading and essay-writing as the pinnacles of English language arts education.”

There is only one solution if old age is not to be an absurd parody of our former life, and that is to go on pursuing ends that give our existence a meaning — devotion to individuals, to groups or to causes, social, political, intellectual or creative work… In old age we should wish still to have passions strong enough to prevent us turning in on ourselves. One’s life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation, compassion.

Simone de Beauvoir via The Marginalian

“The atheist staring from his attic window is often nearer to God than the believer caught up in his own false image of God.” 

― Martin Buber

‘It could be that God has not absconded but spread, to a fabric of spirit and sense so grand and subtle, so powerful in a new way, that we can only feel blindly of its hem.’

Annie Dillard via Katherine May