Many thanks to those who, here and elsewhere, have offered me condolences on the death of my mother. Today I wrote a post about the little country churchyard where my family are buried — and how they came to be buried there. Posting will continue to be slow for another week or more.
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Two quick announcements:
Turns out my Sayers biography is already available in digital form — if you’re a subscriber to Oxford Academic: see here.
Over at the Hog Blog, I have a longish essay about the great American autobiographer Pauline Kael. Some links seem to have disappeared from that piece; that’s generally okay, but a key one goes to the interview with Audrey Diwan in the documentary Room 999.
If I don't post much in the coming days and weeks this is why.
I feel that I ought to say something about what Wendell Berry has meant to me, but I am struggling to articulate it — partly because some family health difficulties are consuming my attention, but also because the debt is deep. Once, in the early 1990s, I was talking with a grad-school friend at a wedding and describing my abiding fascination with Berry, whom I had discovered when, in 1982, I picked up a copy of Standing By Words on the books-possibly-to-be-reviewed table at the offices of the Virginia Quarterly Review. “But,” my friend stammered, “he’s a … a … conservative.” “Yes and no,” I replied. That’s probably where I would start. With that, and with the comment that he is one of the very few contemporary writers I have been reading constantly for more than forty years.
Matt Crawford:
Momentarily on the back burner in 2020, the global emergency of carbon dioxide could still be summoned as needed. But with climate, as with Covid, the politically supine character of technical bodies tasked with science-settling, on behalf of the emerging ord...
Paul Kingsnorth:
That moral certainty is perhaps the keenest taste left by Berry’s multitudinous writings. It was never self-righteous—Berry was often self-deprecating, self-questioning, or drily funny—and neither did it pretend that “going back to the past” was any kind of...
I have a tip for anyone teaching Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday. Begin your class thus: “Imagine that you’re sitting on a bench under a tree reading this book. An acquaintance comes up and asks what you’re reading. You show her. She says, ‘Hmmm. What’s it about?’ What do you say?”
Green jay on javelina; South Texas represent. Via Texas Parks & Wildlife.
Mark Humphries: “To my mind, the traditional research paper as a tool of differential assessment is now dead. And I think it should be left to rest in peace.” I believe this judgment is correct.
Morning on campus.
This has been a dark day for me in many respects and now I learn that Wendell Berry has died. One blow too many. Thanks be to God for his message and his work. We shall not look upon his like again.
Teri and I are re-watching Better Call Saul Season 1. It is, as we remembered, amazingly good. We’ll go at least through Season 3; a certain event occurs at the end of Season 3 that, I think, takes some of the energy out of the show. But up to that point at least it’s an absolute triumph. 🍿
If I had a serious professional podcast, the intro music would be “The Super-Natural,” by John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers. 🎵
I had to give Walter Martin a piece of my mind, such as it is.
Ideal epitaph for my tombstone:
GOOD IDEA,
POOR EXECUTION
Angus before his bath: That which I most feared has come upon me.
Fifteen minutes later: Party Time!
It seems that every Premier League match features a commemoration of someone’s death. (Maybe a former player or manager from one of the sides playing, maybe a fan.) As my son says, the real motto of the PL is “Dust thou art, and to dust thou shall return.”
Adam Roberts weighs in on the great question of our time: How tall was Dorothy L. Sayers? I also comment.
Hey look, it’s another maybe-all-this-time-on-social-media-isn’t-good-for-me thing. They keep coming, even though everyone knows what the deal is? Everyone knows. All these pieces are desperate evasions of the essential question: WHY don’t we do what everyone knows we should do?
The Detection Club looks like it might be fun, but I wonder about one thing: Why did the creators decide to make Miles Jupp look exactly like Chesterton but make Bryony Hannah and Cara Theobold look nothing like Christie and Sayers?
You all know how much I love micro.blog, but one thing drives me a little nuts: When I post something that has an error, immediately see the error and correct it, and then have to wait … and wait … and wait for the corrected version to go live. And it seems that every time that happens I get messages from people telling me I made a mistake and I want to shout “I ALREADY FIXED IT DAMMIT.”
PSA: The body of water formerly known as Lake Waco will hereafter be known as Lake Ayjay. I have also renamed the Brazos River as the Ayjay River, and the Bosque River as the Other Ayjay River. I will not be taking questions at this time.
Just learned about Freston Tower from a friend who stayed there.
“Pencil Magazine is a themed print publication featuring work created entirely with graphite pencil and paper.”
