Spent this last evening of the year with my littlest nieces and nephew — chocolate fountain, dance party with strobe effect bulbs in the suburban living room can lights — and with my niece & her husband, expecting my first great niece or nephew in June. In snowy Indiana. A beautiful close.

“My mind is still open to revision, thank God.” — Francis Spufford, naming that truly rare virtue, alongside many other jewels from his singular imagination: amp.theguardian.com/books/202…

“But if democratizing politics would go some way toward improving culture, the reverse does not hold: democratizing culture has gone no way toward improving politics… sarahendren.com/2023/12/2…

Advance copy of Becca Rothfeld’s forthcoming essays ❤️❤️

Soon I will tell you all the back story for the Stolen Bonsais. Tragic. But here is our older son’s suggested attempt to get them back.

Finally got around to seeing The Sound of Metal. Highly, highly recommended.

Buying my tree-loving husband a membership and subscription to the Arnold Arboretum’s magazine based on this beautiful essay from editor @mbattles. The doctor’s office, Gaza, nursing our wounds and the living flora all around us: matthewbattles.substack.com/p/balm-fo…

Speaking of this tiny urban footprint: I’ve been walking the 75 minutes or so to office or studio lately. Down Mass Ave, the city’s pulsing artery, over the bridge and the magificent Charles River, every mixed zone of life and work. For a professor of the built world and locomotive thinker: heaven.

Subway maps of downtown Boston reassure visitors: this place is tiny. You’re looking at the whole “downtown” and you can easily traverse it all day long.

And so glad to see my hero Danielle Allen weighing in on higher ed and the latest free speech thicket: www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/…

All synapses firing! Philip Bess on the sacred city: urbanism as spatial or anti-spatial, human flourishing and sacramental form, the Nolli map of Rome, the ten minute walk as the heart of pre-modern towns. Recommended. thejosias.com/2023/11/1…

Moss really does grow everywhere.

Foreboding, spare, approchable, organic, monumental: I wrote about learning to describe the built world. sarahendren.substack.com/p/vocab-l…

something-something about the way my teenage daughter takes most selfies and friend photos with fish-eye or other distorted lenses — the latest incarnation of self-consciousness, or the photographic equivalent embodied in the distancing of “like” in spoken language

quietude in the face of stranger’s messes: sarahendren.com/2023/12/0…

So so glad to see my friend and likeminded thinker-writer-maker @mbattles here on micro.blog! Welcome him, will you?

Two mentions in one week of Whit Stillman’s films in my feeds/podcasts. Time for a house festival, I think.

Three-hour seminar structure: favorite practices to break it up? Student-led presentations, guest lectures, pair-and-share discussions, writing about reading prior to class, quizzes to warm up, journaling, what else?

Blank slate. New studio space for the next three years. Thank you, City of Boston, for subsidizing artists’ work in the year of our Lord 2023.

I realized that I have a public-facing dog: sarahendren.com/2023/11/2…

So far just opting out completely from Substack Notes, but I see they’re more and more foregrounded in the UI.

Curious if fellow profs have general wisdom about setting up a grad student as research assistant when you’re in the earliest stages of inquiry. How do you send them off to do good work when you’re not sure what you’re looking for? Looking for frameworks, meeting cadence advice, documentation help.

“Sometimes, ‘This’ll do’ is experienced not so much as ‘settling,’ but as the hard-won apprehension of a great transcendent truth.” www.the-hinternet.com/p/news-of…

Finally saw Master and Commander. What terrific storytelling. Peter Weir is the real deal.

I wrote about a radically imaginative partnership between artists and adults at a Scottish day center for the December issue of Harper’s. Intelligence, art, and encounters outside the logocentric ideal: harpers.org/archive/2…

I loved talking to Krista Tippett, after having her regularly in my head for a couple decades. onbeing.org/programs/…

Loyalty, the “limiting virtues,” and my newly discovered love for the voice memo mode of friendship: sarahendren.com/2023/11/1…

A fellow academic said to me recently, just offhand: I’m a professor, so of course I like answering questions. And I thought: that’s my worst fear. I’m a professor because I always want to be improving my capacity to *ask questions. Of people, of the world, in every way.

Ursula LeGuin on the weight of liberty, and a road trip with kids that set her dreaming: sarahendren.com/2023/11/1…

Rediscovered Blur’s Think Tank today. Like I forgot it ever existed, which is all but impossible in the network era. Time machine. What a great record.

One of our staples around the house is a berry compote—just frozen raspberries and frozen cherries dumped together and cooked down a bit. No sugar needed. We have it around all the time for oatmeal, French toast, dessert.

You’d think after all this time being encouraged, cajoled, now forced to use Outlook, I’d give in and accept it. And yet

I’m teaching Writing About the Built World next spring. I’d love to hear your favorites (criticism on architecture, design, or technology, with “criticism” very broadly defined): sarahendren.com/2023/11/0…

Triumph of the diagnostic? (At least) two opposing narratives on disability and freedom. Trying to get to some of the complexity in my field these days: sarahendren.substack.com/p/triumph…

One big engine of my work remains something like: Revenge-Love Songs from the “Physics for Poets” crowd

A wood shop, an architect, the history of machines, and the art of making one-armed tools. I have a short film in the making: sarahendren.com/2023/11/0…

Robertson Davies on charity as the last lesson: sarahendren.com/2023/10/3…

And I get to hear the Faure Requiem again this coming All Souls Day. A good week.

New Alice McDermott novel comes out tomorrow. Can’t wait.

This q and a with David French on authoritarianism and the threat of Christian nationalism is so good. Even if you disagree with him on most political matters, his careful position and sense of history here is clarifying, sobering, generous and generative. www.youtube.com/watch

We’re hiring at Northeastern: Design, Civic/Social Values, and Democracy. Open rank, broadly defined. Please share with folks you know? northeastern.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/car…

Never been so glad to be paying $$ for newsletters and journalism, rather than get analysis on latest news via social. I am not the product to be bought and sold. I pay and I get reliably smart and mixed strong thinking.

After finishing Wendell Berry’s magisterial Jayber Crow, I started and stopped several novels before picking up a favorite writer from the 90s: Robertson Davies. Every bit as enjoyable as remembered, stylistically, and thank goodness I have forgotten the stories. Reads like the first time.

Depressing as hell: even very smart folks with YouTube channels do that thumbnail treatment with colorful ALL CAPS PROVOCATIONS to get clicks. It must be working, because it’s everywhere.

Curious if profs/teachers here do a module on “how to reasonably argue in seminar.” We can easily *say: refer to the text specifically; your anecdotal experience is welcome, also insufficient on its own; no “vibes” critique, no ad hominem. But I sure would like an elegant activity to demo all.

“All sports involve some kind of disabling impediment, in the form of rules that restrict the ways in which one can achieve the object of the game…. sarahendren.com/2023/09/1…

Two things I might have studied, if I hadn’t been such an incurable melancholy poet type: midwifery or constitutional law.

New semester, new season: maybe you, like me, are trying out some new habits and patterns. Let me reassure us all with the Implementation Dip. It’s real. Be patient.

In the ongoing discovery of new-to-me books while still reading aloud to my youngest, let me add another Last Person Fanship to the list: A Wizard of Earthsea. Every sentence as musical as profound.

Maybe I missed wider discussion about it? But this piece by David Brooks on liberalism and assisted suicide is very well done as coalition-building work: www.theatlantic.com/magazine/…

Finally hit a good stride on fiction reading after a bunch of frustrations. This week Tessa Hadley’s Free Love and now Wendell Berry’s Jayber Crow, alongside reading the first of the Earthsea books aloud to my 13 yr old.

These two got a magical Maine cove experience — sea kayaking alongside several pods of porpoises. Their surfacing breaths are so much more alive and grasping up close.

We saw Mission Impossible last night and loved it — sent me back to when I saw the very first one on a hot summer day at the Mann Chinese Theater in LA. Cruise came around a bend in one of those epic slow mo chase scenes and the whole theater erupted in laughter — the kind with utter joy in it.

I no longer think much about turning 50 — since the day has come and gone, months ago — but my inner disposition is still one of Re-Re-Beginning. What work is mine to do? What frame should shape my choices? Have I even been awake this last half century?

Last bit of summer

Derek Parfit on a consequential drive to Andalusia: sarahendren.com/2023/08/2… h/t @chrisfoley

And here’s a companion translation.

Miroslav Volf et al in the new book, “Life Worth Living”—what’s worth wanting? Like a tour through midlife. But also useful for my students this fall.

I reviewed David Gissen’s The Architecture of Disability for this month’s Landscape Architecture Magazine. Featuring the Acropolis, Yosemite, and Madrid’s Salon de Pinos: an interdependent take on the classical allée: landscapearchitecturemagazine.org/2023/08/0…

six verbs for accessible design (hint: nothing “universal”): https://sarahendren.substack.com/p/six-verbs-for-accessible-design?utm_source=activity_item

Shearing layers in a building, and teaching the big ideas in and via design. sarahendren.com/2023/07/3…

Not so interested in Barbie, but loved going back through some old Gerwig interviews about Little Women + Lady Bird (the latter far less successful as a film, but great to see her talk out each process): www.youtube.com/watch & www.youtube.com/watch

My mom on her first kayak trip at age 75. We had a blast in Olympic Natl Park this week and on glorious Lake Crescent (low nitrogen, clear as glass!). I love that she’s sufficiently offline that she told me about a woman I grew up with who’s “wanting to be an in-FLU-encer, do you know what that is?”

Planning a design class toward philosophy, not a philosophy of design: sarahendren.com/2023/07/2…

Olympic National Park! Unbelievable.

Same daughter reporting to the family chat on her other new July skills

My daughter’s foray into printmaking this week. She has just the right mix of hand-eye acuity and relaxed playfulness.

Currently obsessed with watermelon sprinkled with Stardust chili lime mix.

Seeking readings and resources for my new course on design for the assisted human body: sarahendren.com/2023/07/1…

Thinking about how one might organize an architecture/planning class around the themes of US transience, family structures, social mobility, the choice to stay rooted in adulthood, rather than chase jobs only. We got that discourse in Wendell Berry when I was in college, but almost nowhere else.

So pleased my teenagers can still get excited about building a fort on a summer day. How much longer?

My social design collaboration called the Accessible Icon Project is now on view at the Cooper Hewitt, as part of Give Me A Sign: The Language of Symbols: www.cooperhewitt.org/channel/g…

I see my preferred podcast app, Stitcher, is folding later this summer. What other podcast services are folks into these days? I also use the Apple Podcast app, but its UI is…about as good as iTunes.

[School superintendent] Marlon Styles did the opposite of what most leaders do in conflict: he asked for help. He called on local ministers and a group of well-informed community members, whom he called his “positive gossipers,” to speak up… sarahendren.com/2023/07/1…

Possibly the most milestone-birthday-year cliche ever, but I have gone ahead and scheduled a call to explore working with a marathon coach.

It’s going to take a lot of effort to create a countervailing narrative to a generous-seeming “autonomy-led” idea of the good life — to situate autonomy in its right-sized place among a panoply of other strong virtues and civic goods…https://sarahendren.com/2023/07/10/permanent-relief/

Currently reading: Stephen Buoro’s The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa, and Jay Baruch’s Tornado of Life: A Doctor’s Journey through Constraints and Creativity in the ER.

This girl’s three years old today.

Very glad to see Richard Reeves heading up a new institute on boys and men: https://ofboysandmen.substack.com/p/some-news-i-cant-wait-to-share?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

In a few weeks I’ll be around Port Angeles, WA with my mom for a much-anticipated walking trip celebrating our two milestone birthdays this year. Would love recs for day hikes (on the easy end of things), food, sights.

[She] once told me she did not publish a certain writer I admired because he wrote to have the last word on a topic, rather than to open it up. sarahendren.com/2023/06/2…

SO glad to see @dorsalstream@mastodon.cloud here on MB; I recommend you follow what he’s up to. Always good.

I loved this profile of Molly Burhans, a Catholic GIS cartographer working to help the RCC understand its land usage and climate work: www.technologyreview.com/2023/06/2…

Also, I just realized why I had trouble initially with alt text: the tap on the thumbnail only works if you originate the post in the MB app. So, no starting from the photo gallery in iOS, for ex, and selecting MB from there. cc @jean

Gonna have two of my teens work through this text this summer. Geared for younger kids, but I figure the straightforward and easy language will be right for a summer/chill vibe in the assignment.

I have so enjoyed the very protracted process of re-finding some friends I made from Twitter—mostly one at a time, frictionful, and usually via surprise email. No regrets about leaving that platform! And glad that some connections have regrown.

The limits of “principlism” in medical ethics: autonomy, authority, and the search for supple moral foundations. sarahendren.com/2023/06/1…

Trying again to use alt text here… no “done” button once you’ve added text, but gonna see if this works. Weeknight walk to the local ice cream shop. (And update: works!)

Got my colleague Deb Chachra’s book in hand. How Infrastructure Works. Coming this October! This is gonna make some big waves. Deb is one of the best thinkers I know.

Took our three teens to see Past Lives last night. Beautifully done! Worth the price of the theater.

“Booze has a hand on everybody’s shoulder in this city.” sarahendren.com/2023/06/0…

“The World Health Organization errs when it defines health as “a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being.” A related error is made by the agrarian poet and social critic Wendell Berry, whose work… sarahendren.com/2023/06/0…

Currently reading: The Way of Medicine: Ethics and the Healing Profession (Curlin/Tollefsen). Prepping for a seminar!

We saw Bruce Cockburn at the Cabot in Beverly last night. Best kind of concert: small sit-down venue, beautifully preserved old theater, BC with bright white beard and voice as strong as ever. Acoustic, 12-string, Dobro, dulcimer.

Can folks here recommend some good reading on what unites sports that have balls of any kind? Looking for philosophical, theoretical, historical treatments especially. What does a ball as equipment do to the character of a game? How is its presence most effective in making fun/suspense/challenge?

My daughter had her last lacrosse team dinner last night. She’s in 9th grade, first time on a big team. I’ve been skeptical about the lofty claims people make for sports and character, but I have to say: one brilliant coach can be transformative. Here, a sweatshirt with her last name on the back, a group photo on the field under night lights, and a small card with the word “optimism” on it.

the tent and the estuary: sarahendren.com/2023/05/3…

One lucky Mass MoCA visitor got to ride EJ Hill’s roller coaster for one—like a track of stretched pink taffy, very Wonka-esque. Hill says roller coasters are “public monuments to the possibility of joy.”

Today I learned the word “opusculum” from Hernan Diaz—something less than a novella even, a “minor literary work”—and now I feel immense relief that one can just claim the modesty for a project up front. www.nytimes.com/2023/05/1…

Just half the haul from U Chicago Press I got to pick for doing peer review. 🙌

We got some shirts designed for our son’s Unified track team. Today was the state meet. If you have Unified near you, allow me to recommend it: kids with and without disabilities playing together. A natural evolution of Soecial Olympics.

Design is commitment + provisionality. sarahendren.substack.com/p/design-…

I have an essay in Elizabeth Guffey’s new book, After Universal Design. On Carl Sagan, wonder and skepticism, and lessons learned from social practice and critical design.

“Women, the ancient lie, the unattainable mystery, / the apple high on paradisal branches, / the history of heaven and hell, of fall and pardon; / innocence unmasked in God’s own Garden.” Gilbert ends with an affirmation: “Nuns are the fictions / by whom we verify the usual contradictions.” via Micah Mattix: https://themillions.com/2023/05/the-literary-lives-of-mid-century-nuns.html?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Everyone gets a double major: engineering and history. That’s it. That’s all we offer… sarahendren.com/2023/05/1…