KYE discussion with Jack Hanson on Magnifica Humanitas is excellent.
Finished reading: Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout 📚 More tales in the diaspora of Olive Kitteredge. Strout can generate so much from very little.
new forms
Every interview with Christian Wiman is chock full of poetry and aphorisms to think with, and this one is no different. Especially grateful for this, though: Simone Weil says, “There are two atheisms, of which one is a purification of the notion of God,” which can be helpful. Years ago I said that sometimes God calls a person to unbelief so that faith can take new forms. I think faith is always trying to take new forms.
My daughter’s hand-printed thank you cards for her graduation gifts. ❤️
Thanks to Robert Coles for making me feel like less of an academic weirdo: “So what was he? Dr. Coles variously described himself as a doctor, child psychiatrist, wanderer, oral historian, social anthropologist, teacher, friend, storyteller, busybody, nuisance and ‘idiosyncratic oddball.'” RIP.
In other news, I have reached the precise age known as Speaks Aloud to Nesting Birds Outside House Window.
I wrote about our strange contemporary wilderness of public bioethics.
My RA is teaching me the conics and quadratic equations. (Long story, for a project, I know absolutely nothing beyond very basic math.) She suggested we each do a 15 min zine in a meeting to see where our respective heads are. So helpful.
Regular random reminder that, bang-for-buck wise, homemade salad dressing and homemade granola beat anything you can buy. For very little effort (except making sure you’ve got ingredients always around).
Pleased to see the BBC at least engage a theologian (the great Rowan Williams) in the public bioethics of assisted dying.
I loved this KYE episode on Talarico and his faith in politics. Names the range of feelings I have about his self-presentation of faith. And much more to think about too, as always with Sitman and Adler-Bell.
This q and a with Ben Sasse shows how crucial it is to have proper historians in politics. Worth a listen at 14:17 alone: the way he helps young AEI interns keep the political in its place inside a much bigger story. “So…one, one-and-a-half cheers for [enormously vital] government.”
Trying to send to long-term memory: My teenagers sometimes still greet me in the morning by silently presenting their foreheads to be kissed and their shoulders to be hugged. Thin and gangly big people, bleary-eyed and walking slowly, but retaining an echo of cuddling instinct from early childhood.
Our old place had no outdoor space; Brian is SO happy to have these bonsais outdoors again. And this is the site of our grad party for Freddie this coming weekend! Sizeable back patio. Can’t wait.
At two conferences this week, but being Great Aunt Sara for a couple days was the best job of all.
Finished reading: Burdened Agency: Christian Theology and End-of-Life Ethics by Travis Pickell 📚 What an achievement: a beautifully synthesized and articulated set of ideas for thinking through both death and life.
Absolutely divine walk tonight in Fresh Pond Reservoir.
It made me happy to see and hear voice teacher Jaron Legrair talk through the singing technique of Diljit Dosanjh.
inevitable, even if they don't like it
Phil Christman: [O]ne anecdote [in Jill Lepore’s If Then] that has really stuck with me is the following: Right at the moment when Simulmatics made its big entry into politics, the 1960 election season, Harpers ran a very critical, where-will-this-all-end piece about the company. Unbeknownst to readers, and perhaps to Harpers, the whole thing was written by a guy who was part-timing for Simulmatics. I’d always thought of “Gee Whiz, This Tech Sure Is Neat” stories as the result of PR flacks doing their best, but—naive fellow that I sometimes am—it had not really occurred to me that PR could also speak in the voice of the forelock-tugging cultural pessimist, the person who wonders whether a particular technology will permanently diminish the meaning of being human.