Long ago, when I was getting almost-a-phd in history, an advisor told me that I had the inconvenient problem of being interested in absolutely everything. Never a truer thing said.
2024
This conversation with Fordham president Tania Tetlow is great.
LOVED this conversation on Genesis between Marilynne Robinson and Miroslav Volf.
A beautiful thing to see Ted Gioia’s report on live music ticket sales just booming, including at the jazz club around the corner from my building! substack.com/home/post…
I gathered my higher ed posts into an excerpted new newsletter: Unmuddling the University.
I wrote the last in my series on thinking through higher ed. I’ll also summarize it in a newsletter, but here are Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.
I wrote about how people who work in “special needs” assistance have skills that are orthogonal to credentials and training: sarahendren.com/2024/08/2…
Thrilled that I have (late to the party) discovered Dumbify and similar apps.
above is free: sarahendren.com/2024/08/2…
I do love an elder statesman on a crowded city bus — the guy confidently barking move on back.
I find Elizabeth Oldfield’s “micro monastery” residential arrangement so attractive. A rule of life, shared prayers, hospitality and support outside the nuclear family, all of it in the city of London: faith.yale.edu/media/ful…
Can folks recommend some YA nonfiction about 20th century history? I find the offerings in our local bookstores thin. My 14 yo son loved the YA version of Unbroken, for ex, and we just read Escape from Camp 14 together, which is also what I’m looking for — very accessible but not formally YA.
(related?): I really don’t spend time being the language police, and I don’t intend to start. But I do cringe at the use of “-‘tard” as a name-ending for all the stupidities folks despise about their political and culture war enemies.
Colin Farrell is opening up a foundation on the future of housing, work, thriving for people with intellectual disabilities. Impossible to be unmoved by this: youtu.be/JDiD8Z3lW…
Soon I’ll finish William Trevor’s The Story of Lucy Gault, but I picked up Michael Crummey’s The Adversary at the library and got hooked right away!
My 16 yr old daughter is perfecting the art of parallel parking — yes, right away. Essential for this family in Boston, esp since we’ve never had a driveway. My kids’ll be able to drive anywhere after learning in this dense urbanism.
We’re pitching our short doc film to distributors and festivals now! If you know of festivals devoted to science, architecture, disability, technology, let me know.
I’ve worked in disability for years, so the rhetoric of “care” should be a natural and appealing extension of that scholarship. But I find it annoyingly vague and hand-wavey. What do people mean when they invoke it? A ballooning of municipal or state services? Grassroots organizing? Virtue ethics?
An image from Lewis Hyde’s The Gift: Welsh funeral ritual of handing out food and drink over the coffin of the departed.
I see Sarah Perry’s new book is listed for the Booker Prize. I confess I gave up halfway through — maybe my expectations were too high after the transcendent Essex Serpent? I thought the observations of fundamentalist faith were cartoonish, wooden.
I am really pleased to be among this cohort of fellows developing courses on human flourishing at the Notre Dame Institute for Ethics and the Common Good! ethics.nd.edu/fellowshi…
spending the day learning how to read chant notation basics
summer.
Part 4 of my thinking through the college search alongside my teenagers. This one is on the architectural spaces on campus: sarahendren.com/2024/07/2…
Read-aloud update: Malcolm and I finished Escape from Camp 14, kissed the ground of this wacky and troubled country we call home, and went back to the Earthsea series. Now at Tehanu.
Sean Illing is a national treasure, and this deep discussion of Nietzsche and his legacy intellectually and politically is a great example of the best kind of podcast convo with a disciplined academic: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcas…
16 yr old daughter discovering architecture this summer.
Today’s much-needed runner’s high courtesy of TV On The Radio. A bed of roses! A rollercoaster! www.youtube.com/watch
Good to see my grad history program getting a nice influx of support: www.latimes.com/californi…
Trying to lean hard into some advice a priest gave to a friend, and by extension, to me: Don’t push the river.