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.

an overhead shot of a work table, with a man's left hand manipulating tools and notebook and more. The words "Simple Machine" are in the middle, with credits on the upper left corner.

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.

A 19th century engraving of a family handing out food to neighbors over the boxed coffin between them.

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

the square notation developed by monks for singing the daily office

summer.

Three farmers’ market containers of plums, yellow and red

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.

An aerial view of a studio desk has several black and white drawings of house plans and working paper models of buildings

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.