I’m going off all social media including even this one, for the time being. Got some work to do.
I’d be very happy to correspond by email or, preferably, real mail;
you can contact me via my Hello page.
Thanks.
@annahavron et al, Interesting! Wikipedia says that about half the world's languages use gendered nouns/pronouns, but they might be including animate-inanimate divisions, so maybe less than half?
@tinyroofnail @jabel Re sentience: for a long time I've taken Psalm 95 pretty literally: "Then shall all the trees of the wood rejoice before the face of the Lord, for he comes, for he comes to judge the earth."
A conspiracy theory I can get behind: the Tartarian apocalypse.
(via links in Bonnie Kristian’s Substack).
@jabel "...rooted in...thinking." I will say no more.
@tinyroofnail The translator (died 2020) seems to have been a name in "Goddess Spirituality," which doesn't make her an obvious choice to translate FJ. But we'll see.
@marmanold I'm glad you mentioned paying for parking. The city of Ithaca, near us, has gone all-in on smartphone-based parking, making it almost impossible for us resisters to find a legal space. First world problems!
@tinyroofnail So far so good. BTW I got onto Wilbur via his translation of F Jammes' donkey poem, which I love deeply. I thought there wasn't much else by Jammes in English, but just found, and ordered, a book of translations of his poems. Looking forward to its arrival.
Reading Richard Wilbur, Collected Poems.
@ReaderJohn "Reformed" makes me think of the Carthusians' slogan "Numquam reformata quia numquam deformata". That's more like it.
@jabel Cool. Thanks. I hadn't known you had in-the-flesh Orthodox connections.
@ReaderJohn It's a great story, one that I wish were better known. I think Huxley must have known it when he wrote Brave New World.
@dwalbert Naw, just reportage. It's true, summer around here was mostly cool and rainy and I kept waiting for the real summer. From others' posts from other parts of the country, it sounds as if they had our ration of heat added to theirs.
September 1 is the Church New Year, celebrated modestly in church with a few extra hymns. Coming at this time, it feels more like the new year to me than the January 1 civil version. I suppose that, to feel as I do, you have to love the arrival of Fall.
@writingslowly ... which reminds me irresistibly of the Club Silencio scene in Mulholland Dr.
@jabel The 2011 version is very good, I think, attractive and faithful to the book.
Looking up at the hills around our town, I see that the leaves are starting to turn. Time to stop waiting for summer to begin.
@jabel I've thought too of how personal checks can substitute for person-to-person care.
Wow, The Plough published [a “poetry comic”](www.plough.com/en/topics… of a favorite of mine by Hopkins.
@jabel Fixed. Thanks.
In Vox, some thoughts on whether change-the-system thinking has derailed us from basic kindness, helpfulness, and self-sacrifice. (e.g. Why should I buy socks or bus passes for homeless people when it won’t solve homelessness?) I need to look at myself in this regard.
@jack Very interested to see where this goes.
@jack He doesn't have a clock, of course. When he goes to work he picks up his keys, wallet, and change by the front door, but he leaves the wristwatch. Then on his days off (if I'm remembering rightly) he takes the wristwatch too. Hmm...
Looking forward to watching Perfect Days for the fourth time, with a special focus on the puzzle of Hirayama’s wristwatch.
Reading (finally) Archimandrite Vasileios, Hymn of Entry. Intense. “the Gospel cannot be understood outside the Church, nor dogma outside worship.”
@chrisaldrich I wonder if anyone but a metal band would try '666' branding today?
@mjkaul I liked a lot of Sheldrake. I'd read a couple of books on how trees "use" fungi for various purposes, so I enjoyed his exposing this as a tree-centered (dendrocentric? arborocentric??) view: we could as easily say the fungi were using the trees. Fungi seem cooler and weirder the more I learn about them.
Started reading: Schlanger, The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth. Might be eye-opening, might be a bunch of woo-woo. I’ll let you know what I think.
@patrickrhone my wife & I were talking about this today and she reminded me that she bought her wedding dress at a consignment shop!
@patrickrhone Funny, I was just about to post a link to this video. It was eye-opening. I would have liked her to say a bit more about what we can do while we wait for systemic changes. I've been moving toward buying less but more costly stuff (some of it from US makers recommended by you); my wife already buys almost everything at thrift stores, so I guess she's set already. Still, I wish everybody would watch this!
@tinyroofnail Yeah, early on there was talk about Covid being one-and-done, like chickenpox. No such luck: we've had it twice so far.
@lukemperez My that's disturbing. I imagine the day when we can only trust handwritten messages hand-delivered by a trusted courier.
@Denny I hope and expect you'll have a mild course and a quick recovery!
@jaheppler Ah!
“Screen Apnea”. I was interested, because I think a habit of slow, deep, abdominal breathing is important to wellbeing (to mine at least!)
@tinyroofnail I ordered the Collected Poems. Thanks.
Happy 8th wedding anniversary to our son & daughter in law! Here’s a shot from the wedding, with their crowns awaiting them.
As a parent and grandparent, I smiled at this:
The reason you see so many little kids on screens in public is because the parents rightly perceive that normal toddler behaviour is unwelcome in the public square (today). You want a kid to learn how to behave on a plane without a screen? Great. It’s not going to be pretty.
via bonnie kristian
Our culture is built on an imaginary foundation of planning and action. We judge civilizations by what they have constructed and the tools and techniques that have been mastered. All the while, the world in which we live goes on as always. The same rain falls (or doesn’t), the same sun shines. The same stars assume their positions in the sky (though, at present, they are harder to see). The lilies still grow and tomorrow still comes whether we take thought or not. And the larger part of our lives operates in the same manner.
Niche reading: The Heavenly Gift: the ancient art of liturgical bread-making. A good how-to for traditional prosphora prep. I liked the emphasis on the process as a spiritual/ascetic practice.
Reading: Personal Days by Ed Park. Very funny, I’ve been laughing aloud (LOLing?).
We were in the offices of the little local weekly paper, and my head is full of forgotten terms like “paste-up,” “camera-ready,” and “Letraset,” very much part of my life at one time.