You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.
“Consider your origins: you were not made to live as brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge.”
— Dante Alighieri
Seen at the Substack of Philosophors. Though I have long known these lines, I think I have just found the most informative explanation in Prue Shaw's Reading Dante: From Here to Eternity.
]]>Franz Kafka via jillian Hess and Austin KleonAn advantage of keeping a diary consists in the fact that one becomes aware with reassuring clarity of the transformations one incessantly undergoes…In the diary one finds proof that, even in conditions that today seem unbearable, one lived, looked around and wrote down observations, that this right hand thus moved as it does today…
]]>French bakers in Suresnes, just west of Paris, made a 461-foot baguette on Sunday. The massive loaf successfully returned the title of world’s longest baguette to France, according to Guinness World Records, as it exceeded a 435-foot baguette made by (gasp) Italians in 2019.
What we think, or what we know, or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence. The only consequence is what we do.
Philosophors accompanies the quotation with a photograph.
]]>From the weekly newsletter of Exploring Music. This week's theme is Let Me Tell You a Story.
]]>Franz Schubert died asking for more of James Fenimore Cooper’s novels like The Last of the Mohicans.
At SiriusXM Martin Goldsmith dips into his memory archive (and mine) to remind us of what Phil Ochs said—
Ah, but in such an ugly time the true protest is beauty.
I didn't listen long enough to hear whether Mr Goldsmith also asked "when will they ever learn?"
]]>I don't know whether I appreciate more the whole of Jesse Nathan's thoughts in "Baseball Has Lost Its Poetry" or the remarkable feat of placing a reference to "To His Coy Mistress" in an essay about baseball.Most of all, I get the feeling that a languorous 19th-century invention — baseball — is being forced to fit a 21st-century pace of life. Most days, most places, I already feel rushed, sensing, as Andrew Marvell wrote, “time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near.” Now I have to feel that at the ballpark, too?
Describe your ideal reading experience (when, where, what, how).
Immediately on waking up I make a cup of Yorkshire Gold with a chocolate digestive and read in bed for half an hour, or more. Always a book. Never a script or emails. This not only wakes me up, it puts me back in the world we are living in and who we are today. Unless there is an urgent reason I do not look at newspaper headlines, or listen to the news until halfway through the morning.
By the Book at the New York Times
]]>About writing, he said that it was very important that one should, at all costs, go on writing now. ‘It doesn’t seem to me to matter very much whether one isn’t able to do anything very good. The important thing is to keep going. Probably it’s impossible to do excellent work while things are so disturbed.’I mentioned that I hadn’t been able to work, so had started this journal. He said, ‘Yes, that’s an excellent idea. Just writing every day is a way of keeping the engine running, and then something good may come out of it.’
Mandy Brown: “Are you a writer or a talker? That is, when you need to think about something, do you generally reach for something to write with, or look for someone to talk to?” I am an extreme writer — but I recognize the wisdom in this advice:
Shared by Alan Jacobs]]>Talkers need to recognize that not everyone loves to think out loud, and that giving space for writing is part of what it means to make use of the best brains around you. Writers need to remember that writing isn‘t some perfected ideal of thinking and that making space for the messy, chaotic, and improvisational work of talking things out is often exactly what a team needs to create change. Whichever mode you prefer, it’s not feasible to abstain from the other; doing good, collaborative work requires that you practice both modes.
John Feinstein has a suggestion for the soon-to-be new owner of the Washington Commanders—
I was partial to naming the team Pigskins, but I think John has a better suggestion—But there is one decision Harris can make the day he takes over, amid the celebratory fanfare of his “I’m not Dan Snyder” introductory news conference.
Change the team’s name. Yes, again.
]]>How about “Washington Monuments?” Other than the White House, that monument is easily the most recognized landmark in a city full of them. Everyone knows exactly what it is, and it literally towers over the D.C. landscape. It is completely apolitical, the backdrop for so many civic events.
]]>“For decades, the average proportion of humanities students in every class hovered around fifteen per cent nationally, following the American economy up in boom times and down in bearish periods. (If you major in a field like business for the purpose of getting rich, it doesn’t follow—but can be mistaken to—that majoring in English will make you poor.) Enrollment numbers of the past decade defy these trends, however. When the economy has looked up, humanities enrollments have continued falling. When the markets have wobbled, enrollments have tumbled even more. Today, the roller coaster is in free fall.” Nathan Heller in The New Yorker: The End of the English Major.
via NextDraft
"The College Essay is Dead," The Atlantic]]>As the technologists have ignored humanistic questions to their peril, the humanists have greeted the technological revolutions of the past 50 years by committing soft suicide. As of 2017, the number of English majors had nearly halved since the 1990s.
In 1739, there were three times more coffee shops per person in London than there are today. [Ben Leggett and Andrew Seymour]
via Tom Whitwell
]]>On the first day of every month, it's apparently good luck to say "rabbit rabbit" before saying anything else.
— Daniel Pink (@DanielPink) September 1, 2022
So, since I definitely need the help, let me say . . .
Rabbit Rabbit.https://t.co/3oeGkErQNf
This reads like a memo to Merrick Garland… https://t.co/Ipygm1lhB8
— Susan Glasser (@sbg1) March 28, 2022
Would’ve been better. pic.twitter.com/UvVr6ithcO
— Dave Pell (@davepell) February 2, 2022
U.S. quarters get a dramatic redesign with Maya Angelou and other notable women https://t.co/OEAxP1j438
— Fast Company (@FastCompany) January 11, 2022
Captain George Fishley, one of longest surviving American veterans of Revolutionary War, photographed shortly before death in 1850: pic.twitter.com/FnT0rZS7QV
— Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) November 11, 2021
A cartoon by @AliCoaster. #NewYorkerCartoons pic.twitter.com/JpwKO49in5
— The New Yorker (@NewYorker) September 24, 2021
A cartoon by Adam Douglas Thompson. #NewYorkerCartoons pic.twitter.com/iIdClEpNdu
— The New Yorker (@NewYorker) September 9, 2021
For #Smithsonian175, we can’t wait to reopen this November with #TheFUTURES: https://t.co/LpYUrYmn1Z 🤖🌱🔬🚀 pic.twitter.com/wKcKUMhOKc
— Smithsonian Arts + Industries Building (@SmithsonianAIB) August 10, 2021
Can you name the @smithsonian's first museum?🧐 https://t.co/UrF0YyGPRZ #Smithsonian175 pic.twitter.com/CHN1aPIAxO
— Smithsonian Arts + Industries Building (@SmithsonianAIB) August 10, 2021
Tune in for @CBSSunday with @SmithsonianSec@rgoslins and architect David Rockwell to explore #TheFUTURES! https://t.co/7sYeJ8tRpZ
— Smithsonian Arts + Industries Building (@SmithsonianAIB) August 1, 2021