It’s my birthday, and my teenagers are fully leaning into the old people cards (with very very sweet notes inside ❤️).
blog blues
The blog function on my web site is broken, and I don’t know why, and I don’t want to know why. I just want it to work. Something about Siteleaf and GitHub and repos, maybe. I’ve chatted with some backend help folks, but they can’t really see all the connections, and it’s just bumming me out to have a backlog and need to chase down these software details that come with being on more open web applications.
excerpt from my new Comment essay out from paywall
“It can be hard to fully appreciate this kind of design for the astonishing, radical statement in its provision: that the babies of strangers carry the kind of dignity that is tantamount to those of close kin and tribe. It’s an idea that had to be invented, that goes against the self-preserving optimization of communities adapted for fitness. This kind of dignity makes claims on a collective, perhaps a polity. “Design for dignity” is easy to affirm at the high level of uncontroversial principles, but in practice it too often takes on the straightforward structure of unidirectional charity, as though dignity were a good or service extended from those who somehow “have” it to those who somehow lack it.
No Omen But Awe
A friend just shared this Christian Wiman poem: No Omen but Awe I thought it would all resolve one day in diamond time. Life like a gem to lift to the squint as through a jeweler’s loupe. I thought every facet and flaw neither facet nor flaw in some final shine; chance and choice uncanny cognates; form, fate. Now I am here. No diamond, no time, no omen but awe that a whirlwind could in not cohering cohere.
Going to a structured deliberation with students about the conundrum of disability accommodations in higher ed this afternoon. (Private, unrecorded, Chatham House rules.) In case this is also a topic you’re willing to wade into, see this extensive, evidence-packed, and sympathetic report.
Sometimes the New Yorker still brings it.
End of classes this week. Office status = tracks.
“Cognitive surrender” is… vivid (via this excellent roundup of studies and reporting).
My boy, hatless, last Saturday. Newly 16. All the babies grow up.
a listener of last resort
“Via a parent or sister or nun or friend, a spouse or former spouse, names and addresses of the AIDS afflicted had a way of making their way to Dan. One visit tended to lead to another until death intervened. A typical first sentence: ‘I heard from so-and-so that you were ill and thought I would drop by to see how it’s going.’ He never identified himself as ‘Father Daniel,’ just Dan.
Kinda mad no one told me about Clare Carlisle before now. Glad that Transcendence for Beginners is in the mail.
Sperm whales gather up to help birthing mothers and babies.
no amount of debunking multi-tasking will diminish the behavior
Went to a recent school district committee meeting and: almost all council reps on laptops the whole time. Annual symposium at my university today: laptops during presentations. Was visiting consultant to big tech company to speak with staff about an r&d mandate that is open-ended, well-funded, ambitious and: laptops. Endless scrolling while presentations, hearings, talks are happening. I make an absolute rule in my classrooms or it would be the same.
Chocolate chip pancakes on World Down Syndrome Day.
Currently riveted by this book — told by a man who was a young Catholic Worker in the mid 20th c, in the circle of both Berrigan brothers, plus Day, Merton, so many others. If you only see the draft-card-burner rabble-rouser in this character, you’re missing so much.
I’ll be speaking with my philosopher colleague Jacob Stump at a Veritas Forum event on March 25 on Northeastern’s Boston campus—a dialogue about the nature of anger. Register with this form.
on labels and kids and schools
I need to write a long post about the many parents I know who come to me for advice about accepting an ADHD/related dx and the requisite IEP or 504 bureaucracy for their very average kids. It’s a well-meaning move from all parties to “do everything we can to help” by intervening. But the longitudinal data on labels is pretty damning and on medication is mixed at best. Again: good intentions from everyone.
Friends in MA and NY: Skylark Ensemble performs a Lent program this weekend. I am so sorry to miss it — this group is incredible.
Officially: gonna make it
Currently reading: Burdened Agency by Travis Pickell 📚So many strong concepts and integrated thinking here.