Teaching takes a lot of energy; it also keeps a person disciplined and specific, resistant to sweeping generalizations about The Youth. Glad for it.
Reading aloud David Chang’s memoir, Eat a Peach, to 14 yr old Malcolm. He enjoys the sweary diatribes about running a restaurant. I was moved by the chapter with strikethroughs and revisions made plain.
Curious if folks have honest thoughts about new Buckley doc, out now on PBS and an archival beast to tame, thanks to my husband who was editor. No talking heads! But so important, useful in this election cycle, etc.
I never tire of design school detritus. World under construction!
not that kind of constraint: sarahendren.com/2024/05/0…
first goslings sighting along the River Charles!
Just bought this print for my office from the Sr. Corita Kent center store: store.corita.org/collectio…
“born of water”: sarahendren.com/2024/04/2…
Parenting is Mostly Restraint, edition 361: Teenagers will silently process your advice to them, even while leaving the room a little early or averting their eyes. And a few months later they’ll parrot back your words. You nod, you concur, you do NOT remind them that it came from you.
Q: How do I do things (3 kids, no default parent, 2 ft jobs, big project-driven deadlines)? A: I don’t drink alcohol or do social media. The former by necessity, the latter by choice. It’s other things too, but those are big. I look back and wonder, truly, how I *ever did those two things regularly.
the refuge of the Mass 💓💓💓
I love seeing this rationale and linked variations on “hello pages”: alastairjohnston.com/introduci…
Dreaming about a one year gap year program in great books, suitable as “core curriculum” prep for other college experiences — you come for trivium-style foundational structures, head out to uni or trade school or whatever. Co-op style, too, with lots of physical exercise and campus maintenance/chores. Does such a thing exist?
First year of classes at Northeastern clocked! Giddy. My students were great this week. It’s only the start of spring, weather-wise, but my summer has begun.
My 18 yr old with Down syndrome bossing his younger sibs around on the family group chat. This is as alpha as he gets.
Is it a coincidence that we had a consult about Paying for College and then, on my run right after, one of the book ideas I’ve been working on snapped right into shape? Prob not. Smelling salts for the brain.
Springtime runner’s high thanks to The The’s “Giant.” First flowers!
I just want to say: in keeping with the “limiting virtues” spirit of my latest newsletter, I am ever more resolved not to utilize any of the promotion tools in Substack. It drives me bananas to see them copying the quote-tweet and algo-pushed design features of Twitter, and I am officially old enough to be that one lady shaking her fist at the sky, so—
James Bridle consults LLMs for advice about building chairs, has mixed results: booktwo.org/notebook/…
Anyone here know students at St. Michael’s College at the U of Toronto? I’m intrigued on my kids’ behalf.
On the city and the “limiting virtues”: cafe, church, library: open.substack.com/pub/sarah…
My youngest is 14 today. 💔 Should I just openly tell my grad students that being a wife and mother is orders of magnitude more meaningful than any work I’ve done (and I need work like oxygen)?
Yikes! Jordan Castro’s unsparing look at the ubiquity of “right?” as a form of commanding consensus in professor-speak: sarahendren.com/2024/03/2…
Good to see this reasoned testimony by Carter Snead to the senate, offering principles and correcting the record on misconstrued cases after Dobbs. https://ethicscenter.nd.edu/assets/562574/snead_senate_judiciary_20240320.pdf
Our 15 yr old daughter reports that her friends laugh, in a friendly way, at the idea that we have “family dinner.” Apparently few people among her cohort do this??