Also from the Folio Society, a Clive Hicks-Jenkins illustration from Beowulf.
The wood engravings of Harry Brockway — this one of the creature made by Victor Frankenstein.
Couple this piece on west Texas “sky islands” with one of my own on the same subject.
Y’all have heard me say this before, but one of the very best things about my job is seeing the amazing things that my students end up doing. This new book by (my former T.A.!) Robin Reames is just superb, full of wisdom about what it means to think — and speak, and even listen — rhetorically.
Campus is looking nice this cool (for Texas) spring morning.
Max Read: “It sometimes feels like Instagram designed Threads with ‘context collapse’ as a goal to be met instead of a hazard to be avoided…. This is a platform designed around a purpose it cannot fulfill, on an app built to undermine it, with an audience transposed from another social network with a completely different purpose. To me, it is a miracle that anyone is using it at all, but one lesson of the internet is that you should never underestimate the power of a blank text box with a blinking cursor for compelling users to contribute.”
Trimming the abelia this morning, I remembered my old handmind in Covidtide post.
This Ted Gioia piece echoes something I’ve been saying for years: see this tag on my blog.
After what felt like a very long Lent, I almost achieved liftoff this morning when we got to the Gloria of Mozart’s Spatzenmesse. So gorgeously festive.
Jane Goodall on her 90th birthday: “When I look back over my life, I mean, my goodness, the coincidences that led me to the path where I am now were quite clearly points where I could have said yes or no. It depends whether you think there’s just this life or something beyond, I happen to think there’s something beyond. I feel I was born with a mission. Right now, that mission is to give people hope. So when I get exhausted, I look up there and say: ‘You put me in this position, you bloody well help me get through the evening.'”
Angus is so happy when his people come home.
An Easter present for me — author’s (or rather editor’s) copy. So beautifully made. The people at PUP are genuine masters of their crafts.
Some appropriate Good Friday reading, I think: the third and fourth parts of my conversation with Phil Christman.
Here’s the second installment of my conversation with Phil Christman about Auden.
An astonishing carving that may stay in the U.K. — but the art’s the thing, this day, this week.
I talked with Phil Christman about Auden and especially The Shield of Achilles: here’s the first installment of that conversation.
Over at my Buy Me a Coffee page, I wrote about what I’ll be up to for the next few years.
Last post before returning to Lenten silence: I’m really honored to have a place in the new edition of my buddy Austin Kleon’s newsletter. Never thought of myself as someone who could generate text for posters, but maybe that’s my new thing!
I have learned so, SO much about movies from David Bordwell, and am genuinely grieved to learn of his death. R.I.P. The tribute from Damien Chazelle quoted in that post is especially telling.
