Benjamin Riley continues to provide a great service for those of us in education. Here he walks through the data in a new study on AI usage and learning outcomes — one of the first large-scale and empirically rigorous assemblages we have. You…won’t be surprised at the findings.
Brad Johnson’s show at Claire Carino Contemporary opens in September. I’ll be in conversation with Brad on 9/19. Details to come!
Among the things I wrote in a letter I’ll leave with my daughter after we move her into her dorm for freshman year tomorrow: A good classroom contains a mix of truth-seeking and social cohesion. Both are important; you probably can’t get to real truth-seeking without some bedrock of the cohesion part. But it is possible to foreclose truth-seeking by making cohesion the only goal. Students may speak about this as “validating” each other’s experiences or by insisting on only elevating exceptions to all generalized principles before the principles can get real analytical traction.
Got to do a studio visit with Mark Thomas Gibson while we were at a residency together last month.
I got through a scary-for-me medical test this morning thanks to my husband Brian. He brought the exact right mix of physical reassurance, holding my hands through the entire thing, and charming all the clinical staff by making jokes right and left. I laughed out loud in the middle of it. When I met Brian more than three decades ago, his capacity to make me laugh was a huge attraction, but I had no idea then just what a lifeline it would be.
I enjoyed the first half, so far, of The Correspondent on audiobook for a lengthy road trip. Epistolary form throughout, and the various letter writers are played by different voice actors. A quiet book with rewards in it. Recommended if you’ve got drive time coming up.
Frank Kermode’s The Genesis of Secrecy is the book form of his Norton Lectures in 1977-78. He says in the lectures that he is not a man of faith, but he takes up the gospels of Christ for an extended meditation of the work of the translator and interpreter of ancient texts. Here he is below on Mark’s gospel; Kermode sees this widely recognized first and source text as underrated, literarily speaking, compared to Luke or John:
[Corrected link] Now this is a great commencement speech. I’m still smarting from the extremely silly choice of speaker my institution made this year. May more go forth and be like Angelou, here in her prime.
thirty one years ❤️
my daughter’s further lino print adventures
I will never tire of conversion stories in all their many forms, and this from @mbattles is especially memorable: You know how it’s been for me since last June, when I stumbled into a stretch of the Damascus Road that runs secret along the Victoria Line of the London Underground. I mean that shift of gravity that I can only call by the name “conversion.” You’ll remember me recounting how suddenly I was struck, amid the swaying and banter and laughter of a group of Italian schoolkids as they came tumbling aboard—struck by the shine of their souls big enough to fill the universe, by the radical precious value of creatureliness in each one, and by the unassailable force that holds these together, which can only be called love.
Currently reading: Dust and Light: On the Art of Fact in Fiction by Andrea Barrett 📚
Andrea Barrett, from Dust and Light: Here’s a passage from a letter Anton Chekhov wrote on December 9, 1890, to his friend Alexi Suvorin, describing his journey back from Sakhalin: When we left Hong Kong the ship began to roll. The vessel was empty and made thirty-eight-degree swings, so we were afraid it would capsize. I am not prone to seasickness—that discovery came as a pleasant surprise. On the way to Singapore the bodies of two people were thrown into the sea.
Currently reading: A Long Game by Elizabeth McCracken 📚 Inhaled this. McCracken is my queen.
Mary Ellen Mitchell: They may not know, but I should tell them, that Carol delivers me breakfast every Monday morning and then cleans the shelter; Amber prays for me whenever she passes MaryEllen street, which she does a lot, because it intersects with the street she lives on. Jeannette texts me weekly to let me know she’s thinking of me, in between doing legal favors for Lydia’s House, because she’s an attorney.
16 yr old son musing after dinner: If LOTR didn’t exist, I think I’d actually be a different person?
pickles, various
Many neighbor chats are still about the whole World Cup unlikely-patriotism borne of tourists' reported love for all things USA. True where you are?
I have central air for the first time in my adult life, and it is a MAJOR upgrade.