I’ll be back!
Looking at what the next few weeks hold for me 😬 I realize that I need to take a break from micro.blog for a while. I’ll still be writing at the big blog, though perhaps less frequently than usual. Ciao for now!
I just keep coming back to this one. 🎵
People love Big Stories, sweeping narratives that seek to describe the whole world or the last thousand years, but Big Stories always obscure two essential truths: (a) that local conditions are endlessly variable, and (b) that you and I are constrained by and accountable to our local conditions.
Rachmaninoff in Sydney — a report from one of my students.
I wrote up My Correct Views on Theological Diversity – the title being a nod-and-wink in the direction of Leszek Kołakowski.
You probably have not heard of Mildred Pope, but I bet you’ll be glad to learn about her.
When I’m writing my back would very much prefer that I do it while reclining in a comfy chair, but this photo shows why that wouldn’t really work.
Feels good to cross the 10K barrier. (Working on my Sayers bio.)
Via Damon Krukowski, a reminder that even a basic calendar of events could be a work of art if you wanted it to be.
@eastbrad Possibly of interest: blog.ayjay.org/operating...
Here’s a new post for my BMAC supporters.
If you slip the cover art out of the plastic box that holds the Criterion edition of Perfect Days and look on the back side, you see this:
Full-size image here. (I ran that through the scanner but the folds are still somewhat visible. I apologize.)
China depicted by a 17th-century English artist – at the V&A.
Breaking news: VAR in the Premier League continues to be worse than useless. ⚽️
I wrote about Adam Roberts’s novel Space Satan!!! — that’s the title Adam’s son prefers and I can’t disagree.
I find that I’m not at all ready for the return of (European) footy, not after the Euros and the Olympics. I’d like another month or so to build up some excitement. ⚽️
I wrote about Sherlock Holmes and Jacques Derrida. As one does.
My all-time favorite edition of Nick Cave’s Red Hand Files is this one, about an unfortunate encounter with Charlie Watts.
Had dinner at Red Herring tonight and the cacio e pepe was, if not to die for, certainly to kill for. Okay, maybe also to die for.
@toddgrotenhuis It's worth resurrecting!
@eastbrad Naturellement, I think this is wrong! Re: wizards, they chose hiddenness because they were being persecuted, and persecuted by whom? Well, in our world's England -- and we're told that Harry Potter takes place in our world -- the persecution of witches went hand in hand with the persecution of Catholics. (Spells and the Mass were both magical rites, demonically inspired.) The old wizard families like the Blacks and Malfoys are therefore analogous to the old Catholic families of England who held to the old faith in secrecy. Re: the Jedi, they are analogous not to anything medieval but rather to Cato and the other Republicans who deplored the rise of the Caesars and tried for as long as they could to keep the flame of Republicanism alive. Both wizards and Jedi are adherents of ancient and widely discredited ways; each group sees itself as a kind of saving remnant.
@patrickrhone I agree with all that.
@eastbrad Don’t forget the key difference, which is that wizards have a sense of humor. 😉
@JohnPhilpin I'm determined to figure it out!
@bjhess This is all impressive! -- but I'm not looking for a new blogging platform right now. I need to sort out all my domain issues and then I can think about other things.
@SimonWoods I expect to be here! But as I said in an earlier post, I also don't want to lose the 15 years of tags I have at blog.ayjay.org, which connect ideas to one another in ways I (and at least some readers) find useful. I'm confident that Manton wants to help if he can, which at least is an improvement over my other hosting provider -- they can't wait to be rid of me.
@ayjay So many people have moved to social-media platforms in the past decade that the only people still on the open web are people who know more than I do, and I am struggling with the techies' usual lack of patience with anyone who knows less than they do. I am really concerned that I will lose ayjay.org and blog.ayjay.org.
@teedan Burnham was not the sort to apologize or retract, but it would be interesting to know whether he'd have written the book at all if he had started it in 1944 instead of 1940.
@teedan He saw it in Nazi Germany, and believed that it was so efficient that it would spread throughout the world. After all, he argued, its efficacy would be proved by Germany winning WW2.
@ablerism Gotta love a church in north Texas that looks like it ought to be in north Italy.
@jaheppler Thanks!
@toddgrotenhuis I do like the idea of having one site to manage.
@manton Thanks for weighing in, Manton! Unfortunately I have too many tags. I'm thinking about perhaps consolidating them pre-import? And re: the theme, it's by Anders Noren, a WordPress developer, but it is open-source: andersnoren.se/teman/hof...
@reclaimhosting The email I got from y'all said that my site would not be down during this upgrade but my site (ayjay.org) is down but I bet y'all know that already but I am saying so here just in case. EOM.
@teedan @ablerism It's an interesting question that I need to think about further. I gave a talk some years ago — slides here — in which I talked about reading spaces in universities. I think there should be more of them, but Sara has me thinking about how they might be distinguished, architecturally, from other kinds of space.