Inquirer previews …

… Spring forward into great new books: Fiction, nonfiction, and sunlight.

… Good writers will talk about good writing.

Something to think on…

Art and prayer are the only decent ejaculations of the soul.

— Joris-Karl Huysmans, born on this date in 1848

Sam Harris: Winning the War of Ideas

Facing mortality …

… Between the Lines: Writing Through Cancer | WMUK. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)

Found …

… Moving poems written by WWI soldier on the front-line revealed for first time after laying undiscovered in a loft. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)

Anniversary …

… Paul Davis On Crime: On This Day In History James Fenimore Cooper 'The Last of the Mohicans' Was Published.

Final call …

… Independent Publisher: THE Voice of the Independent Publishing Industry.

The play's the thing …

… R.T.'s Commonplace: Back on the road via "Our Town" (4 February 1938) and the promise of many more stops before the end of the line.
I think the first play I ever saw in a theater was a college production of Hamlet, which was quite good. I guess the one I remember was another college production, of Much Ado About Nothing. I was the prompter. I am fond of modern French drama — Giraudoux, Anouilh.

By the way, an excellent 1977 TV production of Our Town can be watched on YouTube.

Consistently outside

… Robert Graves, Reluctant War Poet. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)



Dave also sends along: The old trench-mind at work.

Same old same old …

… There's Nothing New About Fake News. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)



Regarding the Orson Welles broadcast, here is something interesting from the Wikipedia entry on Msgr. Ronald Knox:

In January 1926, for one of his regular BBC Radio programmes, Knox broadcast a simulated live report of revolution sweeping across London entitled Broadcasting from the Barricades. In addition to live reports of several people, including a government minister, being lynched, his broadcast mixed supposed band music from the Savoy Hotel with the hotel's purported destruction by trench mortars. The Houses of Parliament and the clock tower were also said to have been flattened. Four months later there was considerable public disorder during the General Strike so the possibility of a revolution was real at the time. Because the broadcast occurred on a snowy weekend, much of the United Kingdom was unable to get the newspapers until days later. The lack of newspapers caused a minor panic, as it was believed that this was caused by the events in London.^[11]

A 2005 BBC report on the broadcast suggests that the innovative style of Knox's programme may have influenced Orson Welles's radio broadcast "The War of the Worlds" (1938), which it foreshadowed in its consequences.^[12] In an interview for the book This is Orson Welles, Welles himself said that the broadcast gave him the idea for "The War of the Worlds".^[13]

Politics as usual …

… Zealotry of Guerin: The High Council (Mabuse), Sonnet #335.

Something to think on…

We should try to be happy, just to set an example.

— Jacques Prévert, born on this date in 1900

Music and...

...Trump Country

Tales by Dylan Thomas …

… POETICS IN THE FICTION OF DYLAN THOMAS | North of Oxford.

Have a listen …

… Poetry Stars in a Movie. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Not for the weak of heart …

… Z213: EXIT: Poena Damni | North of Oxford.

Have a listen …

… Rifftides | Getz, Two Gilbertos And Jobim. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Verbal economy …

… Scorpions – Brief Poems by Hilaire Belloc | Brief Poems. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Something to think on …

All the best stories in the world are but one story in reality —  the story of escape. It is the only thing which interests us all and at all times, how to escape.

— Walter Bagehot, born on this date in 1826

$%*# - that's your title!

Book Publishers Are Printing More #@$% Than Ever

 Link here - (using Google search to bypass WSJ paywall)

RIP - Bambi's Artist dies at 106

Tyrus Wong:  

What was so distinctive about "Bambi" was his approach, this very spare and very poetic approach. Prior to "Bambi," they had released "Snow White." And if you look at the forest in "Snow White," you see every detail, every twig, you know, every leaf. 

Tyrus took an entirely different approach, you know, with the less-is-more. He had a very painterly style. It was just - you see the - literally the brush strokes in the paintings and in the backgrounds. And he - you know, he was just trying to evoke the feeling of the forest rather than the forest itself. And so when Walt Disney saw some of his sketches, he said, that's it. This is going to be the look.

Blogging note …

My desktop is in the shop until late this afternoon. Getting a new 1 terabyte solid-state hard drive and having software re-installed. So I can only blog using my iPad, which I will do from time to time throughout the day, mostly from The Inquirer.

Hear, hear...

...Trump’s Immigration Ban Was Clumsy But He’s Right About Radical Islam

God bless her …

… Dame Vera Lynn breaks own record with new album at 100 - BBC News. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)



Check out this.



It really was the greatest generation.

Misguided comparison...

...Big-League Brother Is Watching, Say Orwell’s Unlikely New Fans

Killer thoughts …

… R.T.'s Commonplace: Murder in Hollywood -- a tale of vice and vixens.

Amen, amen …

… Sociologist Anne Wortham on Authenticity, the Real Meaning of Individualism, and the Choice to Abstain from Activism – Brain Pickings. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

You would think, with a history such as ours, that we would have understood two things: first, that the government, while we need it, ultimately cannot be our friend, and also that we don’t need it to be our friend, really. It is just an instrument. If minorities broke their alliance with the government, the would depend more on themselves… You see, we would not be here were it not for our own efforts. Most of our history has been in relationship to a government that has not been very kind. Government is not a savior …

This is someone I have to read more of.

Me, myself, and I …

… R.T.'s Commonplace: "I'm Nobody! Who are you?" by Emily Dickinson.

Something to think on …

Every age must look for its sanction to its poetry and philosophy, for in these the human mind, as it looks backward or forward, attains to an eternal state.

— James Joyce, born on this date 1882

Presidents doodling...and this is Ike, not Trump

As you might remember, during the debates, many people wondered what Trump was scribbling while it was Hillary Clinton’s turn to speak. The late-night talk shows had a field day trying to figure it out, but we’d like to suggest that it was just harmless doodling, which according to history, is a rather presidential thing to do.

What about Mao, or, For Those that like this sort of thing

Top 10 most evil men

Trading empathy for art

Hard-boiled hardly does justice to the letter Ernest Hemingway sent to F. Scott Fitzgerald on Christmas Eve, 1925. In the letter, a 26-year-old Hemingway discussed the genesis of his short story “Out of Season”, based on a fractious fishing trip he and his first wife Hadley took in the Dolomites with a drunken old man as their guide. Hemingway explained that after the couple had returned to their hotel, he complained to the hotel manager about their “drunk of a guide”, who was promptly fired. The old man then hanged himself in a stable. Without showing any remorse about the part he might have played in the guide’s demise, Hemingway simply noted that he omitted the suicide episode from his short story because he felt it was redundant. First published in Paris in 1923, “Out of Season” was a ruthless sign of things to come: its near-literal translation of a real-life event that Hemingway had experienced and minutely observed would provide the template for his first novel TheSun Also Rises (originally published in the UK with the differenttitle Fiesta), completed three years later.

RIP...

...Bharati Mukherjee, chronicler of Indian American life, dies at 76

Immanence transcendent …

… First Known When Lost: Beauty.

One needn't be a mystic or an eremite in order to sense that we live in a World of immanence: that, although each of the particulars of the World is wholly sufficient in and of itself, each of those particulars contains a hint of something that lies behind it and beyond it.

Insightful lady …

… Agatha Christie at mass | OUPblog. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

The structure and logic of Christie’s plots mirror the Mass in its full, traditional drama. Her theological anthropology is one of lost innocence, with confessions of guilt for past offences, both spoken and unvoiced, punctuating exchanges. This guilt is frequently shared, problematizing attribution. At the centre is the death of a chosen victim, which is brought about by intentional and often meticulously planned actions. This death might be vicarious, the result of misdirected malice or false identification, and might be necessary to restore an order that has been violated by other, prior sins. A large country house is an appropriate setting, providing separation, distance, obscurity, and grandeur. 

On second thought …

… You Aren't Living in a Hologram, Even if You Wish You Were. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Minority report …

Debbie and I went to see Manchester by the Sea this afternoon. Ran into some friends there as well. None of us liked it. Why Casey Affleck's johnny-one-note performance  has received the accolades it has is beyond me. George, the family friend (C.J. Wilson), is about the only interesting character in the film, but it's a tiny part (which is dumb, given that it is also pivotal). The rest are people one would never want to know. Just an awful movie. Don't buy the hype.

Q & A …

… Honoring Gwendolyn Brooks In Form: An Interview with Peter Kahn — Kenyon Review Blog. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

The Golden Shovel “form” takes a poem or a line by Ms. Brooks (and potentially any other writer) and imbeds it as the last word of each line of a new poem. It’s an acrostic of sorts.

Hmm …

… Study: The universe could be a hologram - AOL News. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

"Many scientists, philosophers, and business leaders believe that there is a 20-50% probability that humans are already living in a computer-simulated virtual world," the report states.

The report alleges that it is conceivable that future civilizations created the world we know as a simulation of their ancestors.

Anything that you can form a concept of is conceivable. This strikes me as another example of creeping essentialism — putting the categories of thought before actual being.

The stuff of a story...

...This is such a great little piece. Reads like Fitzgerald.

...do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not.

The pastor of a largely immigrant Catholic church in Queens has a suggestion for his anti-Trump parishioners: Go take a flying leap off the nearest building. 

“Show your hate for Trump. Do it for social justice. #JumpAgainstTrump,” read a meme posted by the Rev. Philip Pizzo just hours after he celebrated Sunday Mass.

More by Merton...

A life is either all spiritual or not spiritual at all. No [person] can serve two masters. Your life is shaped by the end you live for. You are made in the image of what you desire. 

— Thomas Merton, born on this date in 1915

Rosebud...

Your life really does flash before your eyes when you die, a study suggests - with the parts of the brain that store memories last to be affected as other functions fail.

For friends of literature …

… R.T.'s Commonplace: "A Time to Talk" by Robert Frost.

And for translation …

… A passion for poetry. (Hat tip, G. E. Reutter.)

Personal sabbath …

… How the Poet Ron Padgett Spends His Sundays. (Hat tip, G. E. Reutter.)

Paterson, by the way, is a very good movie.

Something to think on …

Depth must be hidden. Where? On the surface.

— Hugo von Hofmansthal, born on this date in1874

Something to think on …

Just remaining quietly in the presence of God, listening to Him, being attentive to Him, requires a lot of courage and know-how.

— Thomas Merton, born on this date in 1915

In case you wondered …

… 4 Sinclair Lewis Novels More Relevant Than 'It Can't Happen Here' | The Weekly Standard. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

A recalcitrance to mastery …

… Ever Green - bookforum.com / current issue. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Green would have hated it in the present, where long sentences are considered stressful, the most insane trivialities make the headlines, and writing for a daily readership means explaining, list-making, fact-checking, annotating, and opining about nothing. "Inexplicable" appears in criticism as some kind of diss (an actor has an "inexplicable accent," a heroine "inexplicably falls in love" with a freak), but if a critic can't explain something, then either the critic is ultracrepidarian or the thing is best unexplained. "If you want to create life," Green said, "the one way not to set about it is by explanation."

Anyone who hates the present can't be all bad.

Worrisome …

… R.T.'s Commonplace: King Lear: memory, concentration, senility, madness, and dangers to self and others in the cosmos.

Blogging note …

Another busy day. I will resume blogging whenever I can.

FYI …

 

ANNOUNCING:

 

'The International Age of Trump Cli-FiShort Story Writing Compilation''

 

(not a contest and no winners, but with an important purpose and chance to air your views as a short story writing in this Age of Trump, either pro or con Trump, all views accepted.)

 

Stories will be published with your byline on a designated Facebook Group Page and on a separate blogspot blog with Twitter announcing the entire list of stories with links to the individual stories by the individual authors.

 

Story length 800 - 2500 words.

 

Byline should be your real name.

 

Copyright belongs to you and you may publish the story elsewhere as well if you wish, but the story should be original and written in 2017 or 2018 in this Age of Trump.

 

Time frames may be the past, the present, the near future, the distant future. As stories come in, they will be published here and on a separate blog. Stories should be cli-fi in essence and they should use the words Trump or Age of Trump in the text somewhere, perhaps in the title, too.

 

Again, all POV are welcome so if there is a Michael Chrichton out there who wants submit a "State of Fear" kind of pro-Trump short story that is pro-Age of Trump, that is fine, too.

 

However, one suspects that most entries will be taking aim at Trump and the Age of Trump and his attitudes toward climate change issues.

 

Stories may be Time Travel or Current Days or Near Future Days, whatever your imagination tells you to write.

 

The compilation starts today, and will continue for a year or two or three or maybe 8 years. Time will tell.

 

Stories may be Cli-Fi Lite, Cli-fi Dark, Cli-Fi Deep, or Cli-Fi Humor. All writers are welcome, all nationalities, all languages, all ages.

 

Starting NOW! -- send in your stories by email to subject line ''The International Age of Trump Cli-Fi Short Story Writing Compilation'' to this email address: bikolang@gmail.com

Hmm …

… The Image Top 25 Contemporary Writers of Faith List - Image Journal. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)



Well, I reviewed Richard Rodriguez's Darling  and I certainly agree about that. But I also reviewed Marilynne Robinson's Home, which I thought was awful. If  religion really were as she depicts it I would run as fast as I could in the other direction. Geoffrey Hill is a good choice, though. Most of the rest I'm not that familiar with.

Something to think on …

I think that one is constantly startled by the things that appear before you on the page when you're writing.

— Shirley Hazzard, born on this date in 1931

A good Greek …

… The Classicism of Robert Frost - The Imaginative Conservative. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

A Different Culture than yours...

Our community, the trans and LGB community, was worse off, even under the Obama administration, than everyone else. And now, with the new Trump administration, we have to cope with a federal government determined to make us the bleeding edge in this cultural war. Fucking literally — since trans and LGB people symbolize everything that isn’t “Making America Great.” I’d like to at least be safe in my home city, the City of Freedom; of Love for all its People. Because none of us, you, me, my clients, anyone, chose who we are. We have to do as well as we can with it, with us, and each other. 

LGBTQ&A: Julie Chovanes 

Interesting Historical Note...

Around noon on January 30th, Hitler was sworn in. 
"I will employ my strength for the welfare of the German people, protect the Constitution and laws of the German people, conscientiously discharge the duties imposed on me, and conduct my affairs of office impartially and with justice to everyone," swore Adolf Hitler.

Wayfaring …

… R.T.'s Commonplace: Blogging note -- Lost in the cosmos.

Oh, those so-called benighted times …

… Nigeness: From the Fifties.

Good to know …

… Reports of the Death of Religious Art Have Been Greatly Exaggerated - Los Angeles Review of Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Encore …

… R.T.'s Commonplace: Proof of God in mathematics (and elsewhere).

I linked to an article about this awhile back, but it's worth considering again. My prayer life is where I look for God, and it has led me to where I am coming to understand what Jung meant when he said that he did not believe in God, but simply knew that He was.

Nice photo …

… Boston Women's March for America #01 Photo by Rus Bowden — National Geographic Your Shot.

Cleansed of humor …

… The University Bookman: Not Lucian’s Lucian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Hmm …

… How a Christmas Eve tweet roiled a university.



“All I want for Christmas is white genocide.” So the guy claims this was satire, because "white genocide" is "a paranoid racist fantasy." But jokes about genocide have a tendency to fall flat, especially on Christmas (you know, "peace on Earth" and all that). And exactly how am I to understand from his tweet that it is meant satirically? I guess "Off the Pigs" was meant for yucks as well. (Full disclosure, as they say: I am the son of a cop, and the uncle of another.)

The article says he "teaches radical theory and has written on the Venezuela revolution." Is that a radical theory of something in particular or a theory about thinking things down to their roots (radix — root). Oh, and how's that revolution in Venezuela working out, Prof?

Interesting that just about every comment is negative.

Typo outrage …

… Cli-Fi.Net -- (the world's largest online 'Cli-Fi' portal for Cli-Fi, a subgenre of sci-fi): A tale of two newspaper styles: The New York Times lowercases the word "earth" when it should be "Earth," while the Taipei Times does capitalize the word "Earth" in the same exact article from the NYT wire service. WTF? ''BOO'' NYT! ''BRAVO'' Taipei Times!

Well, when referred to as a planet, it is uppercase, like Neptune. When referring to compost, it's lowercase. I don't myself get all sentimental about it as my "home," but I don't tend to get all sentimental about anything. 

RIP …

… Alexander Chancellor, a raffish editor more interested in cocktail parties than political ones. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Birthday remembrance …

… R.T.'s Commonplace: Chekhov and champagne.

Reveling in language …

… Stones in the Fruit, Seeds in the Stone: On Stephen Yenser’s “Stone Fruit” - Los Angeles Review of Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Inquirer reviews …

… 'The Kid': Sensitive, sympathetic portrait of a Western outlaw.

… 'Him, Me, Muhammad Ali': Irreverent tales of Arab American women.

… 'A Thousand Miles from Nowhere': The Madness of nature, the madness within.

… 'Birds Art Life': A symphony of a book to delight all of us.

RIP …

… John Hurt: 1940-2017 | Balder and Dash | Roger Ebert. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

He of course starred in the definitive film version of 1984.

On a contrarian roll …

… The Question the Times Should Have Asked ‘Writer’ Barack Obama | The American Spectator.

Unlike Kakutani, when author Paul Watkins reviewed Dreams for the Times in 1995, he judged the book on its merits. Unaware that Obama one day would become the beau idéal of progressive America, Watkins failed to serve up a single quote the aspiring author could put on a book jacket. The most usable one — “At a young age and without much experience as a writer, Barack Obama has bravely tackled the complexities of his remarkable upbringing” — damns with faint praise. As Watkins understood, Dreams, though lyrical in parts, is not all that good.

Another contrarian view …

… The Enduring Wisdom of Montaigne - WSJ. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Philippe Desan’s “Montaigne: A Life” is animated by the purpose of detonating this carefully cultivated image. It is an effort at disenchantment. Montaigne’s informality and transparency, in Mr. Desan’s telling, were rhetorical strategies and triumphs of artifice. Montaigne’s exploration of the private self was not a natural impulse but an adjustment required by the defeat of his considerable political ambitions. Previous biographers, Mr. Desan argues, have piously replicated the self-portrait of the “Essays.” He seeks to drag the solitary genius back into his social milieu, exposing his conventionality.

Sounds like more academic BS. I prefer to take Montaigne at his word. Nor do I think he was "the servile conformist to settled dogmas." I think his Catholic piety was genuine.

More dissent …

… R.T.'s Commonplace: Jane Austen - dissenting views.



When I was first read Pride and Prejudice as a 15-year-old working-class high school kid, I found it largely incomprehensible. The world it describes was so alien to me that it could have been written in Urdu. That, of course, is more a criticism of me than of Jane Austen.

The big questions …

… Zealotry of Guerin: Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? (Gauguin), Sonnet #334.

Contrarian viewpoint …

… The Fantasy of Addiction by Peter Hitchens | Articles | First Things. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

According to research cited by Hari, from The Archives of General Psychiatry, some 20 percent of U.S. soldiers serving in Vietnam had “become addicted to” heroin while there. The study showed that 95 percent of these men had stopped using heroin within a year of returning home. “Treatment” and “rehabilitation” made no difference to this outcome. As Hari writes, “If you believe the theory that drugs hijack your brain and turn you into a chemical slave . . . then this makes no sense.”

Indeed it doesn’t. I could also cite the millions of hospital patients given medical morphine (effectively the same as heroin) during illness or recovery from injury, who do not become dependent upon it. Or I could note the view of Anthony Daniels, who often writes under the pseudonym Theodore Dalrymple. He was for many years a prison doctor, and constantly encountered heroin abusers. He describes their withdrawal symptoms as being similar to a fairly bad bout of influenza.

This is exactly what I was told by a friend who withdrew from heroin cold turkey (having no choice, since he was behind bars). He described as being like the worst case of flu he had ever had.

Hmm …

… on the one hand: Going Orwellian: Party like it's 1984 | NOLA.com. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)



… on the other: The Real Lessons Of 1984 Have Nothing To Do With Donald Trump. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

The Trump White House's ridiculous attempt to speak of 'alternative facts' wasn't a sign that the Trump White House wishes to close down free thought in America. Why should it want to? Free thought in the USA, as elsewhere in the Western world, isn't threatened. That's because hardly anybody does it and those who do think freely have very little access to mass platforms. On those mass platforms, where news has often become self-affirming storytelling, people are told what they want to believe by their chosen organ of information, and they duly believe it. They want to believe it because they don't want their contentment interrupted by awkward information which might impose obligations on them to think or act. They are cheerfully passive. They have chosen their own passivity, in which they can enjoy the personal autonomy which is now the universal goal.

It is, however, nice to learn that the new President will defer to his Secretary of Defense on the matter of torture. The former is of the opinion that torture can have some utility, the latter apparently thinks not. Actually, I am sure that torture does work at times, but  just as the best argument against capital punishment is that it is wrong to kill people, so the best argument against torture is that it is wrong to torture people.

Something to think on …

One keeps forgetting old age up to the very brink of the grave.

— Colette, born on this date in 1873

William Trevor

I've just finished the fiftieth anniversary edition of William Trevor's first novel, The Old Boys. I purchased the book shortly after Trevor passed away. I'll be reviewing Old Boys for Rain Taxi, so I won't say much now: except that it's a masterful novel, defined as much by what Trevor writes as by what he omits. This is where it started for Trevor: where he developed that eye for detail, that empathy for growing old. I'd suggest The Old Boys to all, especially in its function as a sort of literary bridge: from Waugh and writers of the first half of the twentieth century to Graham Swift and the authors who took up the mantle in the second. The Old Boys is very well done.

Remembering …

Roberta Peters passed away on January 18. (Hat tip, Christopher Guerin.)

Blogging note …

…R.T.'s Commonplace: Coming soon to R.T.'s Commonplace -- this blog will continue under the same name but at a different address.

Well worth watching...

...Milo Yiannopoulos on why the Democrats Lost the White Working Class

A TLS appearance …

… Nigeness: Wallace Stevens under the Sail of Ulysses.

Nige has been on a roll of late. I'll be linking to more of his posts soon.

FYI …

… Cheatonomics | Bill Peschel.

Hmm …

… On quoting the Old Testament | Brandywine Books.

Anniversaries and more …

… R.T.'s Commonplace: Today in Christian history (and, as a bonus, the link to an article about the origin of the Christian fish symbol).

Something to think on …

I don't know; I think I'd be gloomy without some faith that there is a purpose and there is a kind of witness to my life.

— John Updike, who dies on this this date in 2009

Hoarding …

… Bibliomania: the strange history of compulsive book buying | Books | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)

Well worth watching …

(Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

The problem of letters …

… TLSHow poets write letters – TheTLS. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Bishop was by no means the first to bemoan the death of the letter. Each new mode of message delivery, from the penny post to the telegram, has been seen to threaten the art of correspondence. Hugh Haughton, in Letter Writing Among Poets, suggests that Bishop’s inverted commas were a quiet acknowledgement that her statement was already a cliché. The fifteen essays in this volume consider letters written during the past two centuries, and shed light on the state of correspondence today. The editor, Jonathan Ellis, offers a gentle admonition to critics who mourn the “lost world” before the internet (in the words of Rebecca Solnit), a time when everyone wrote at length and thought in depth. The electronic communications disparaged by Solnit and other writers can be seen as a development of the desire to “connect people across time and space”, and one day may seem just as remarkable. Even so, the current nostalgia for letters has given rise to a number of books on the subject, both popular and academic.

Something to think on …

One of the functions of intelligence is to take account of the dangers that come from trusting solely to the intelligence.

— Lewis Mumford, who died on this date in 1990

RIP …

… Harry Mathews, 1930–2017. (Hat tip, Ed Champion.)

Zweig's Exile...

...Translated to film, and up for an Oscar

Blogging note …

Hitting the ground running this morning. Much to do. I won't be blogging again until much later.

Something to think on …

Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young.

— W. Somerset Maugham, born on this date in 1874

Becoming oneself …

… R.T.'s Commonplace: "Into My Own" by Robert Frost.

Counting the ways …

.… Why I Write Personal Essays | BREVITY's Nonfiction Blog.

Hmm …

… Orpheus descending : Essays in Idleness. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Truth and power …

… In the Face of Constant Censorship, Bulgakov Kept Writing | Literary Hub.

Pulling no punches …

… Putting Philosophy to Work | Psychology Today. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Interviewers sometimes ask me, “How we can get more women into philosophy?” “That’s the wrong goal,” I reply. “The right goal is to make a person’s sex irrelevant to our assessment of the quality of his or her mind.” So I’m intrigued by recent empirical work suggesting that blinding the hiring process—as I urged decades ago—results in more diverse hires than diversity-training programs and the like.