Blue river, icy sunk where something but nobody fell Now theology is necessary for the way there are these holes & questions Père Noël, whose presents like questions come from the mind: Let me be helpless & hopeless this coming year let me know God and not feel fear Winter tones are rose & glass […]
- Aesthetics
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Creativity 2.0
Margaret Kilgallen at work A provocative article on Slate reviews Jaron Lanier’s latest book, You are Not a Gadget. Written by Slate senior editor Michael Agger, the essay digs into many of Lanier’s ideas and just says No. Lanier, one of the leaders in the early days of virtual reality and an respected Wired alum, […]
Condimenting
Malcolm Gladwell is a phenom to be sure. His books always end up on the best seller list (there are two of them on now, Outliers and What the Dog Saw) and he is a popular inspirational keynote speaker. I admit, I imbibe. I read his New Yorker pieces religiously. I’ve read all his books. […]
Mary Daly: Radical Feminist Pirate
Mary Daly Mary Daly has been a longstanding and highly controversial icon in the Boston area. For some she was a fearless crusader. For others she was overbearing and out of line. She died on Sunday at the age of 81. Her extraordinary story is well known in these parts but here’s a brief backgrounder […]
One More From Rachel’s Hand
Dak Thok Monastery, Ladakh At the Zen Mountain Monastery A double line of meditators sits on mats, each one a human triangle. Evacuate your mind of clutter now. I do my best, squeezing the static and the agony into a straight flat line, but soon it soars and dips until my mind’s activity looks (you […]
- In Memoriam
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Meanwhile’s Far From Nothing
So sorry to read about the death of poet Rachel Wetzsteon. She was the poetry editor at The New Republic as well as a member of the faculty of William Paterson University in Wayne, N.J. Her death has been deemed a suicide. She was 42. The Times obituary described her as a “prominent poet whose […]
Hi Ho Silver
For the must be shared file: My SO David ran across a blog a few days ago that has kept both of us pretty fascinated. Yes, there are a lot of great blogs but this one is a stand out. If you are interested in the phenomenon of digital social networks, Greg Satell is worth […]
Top Ten, Plus a Few
More lists! This time, it’s books. Amazingly, the overlap of favored titles is not extensive. *** The year’s top books as chosen by the New York Times: Fiction Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It, by Maile Meloy Chronic City, by Jonathan Lethem A Gate at the Stairs, by Lorrie Moore Half Broke […]
The Darker Side of Genius
Paul Klee, mystery man Some highlights the Sunday Times Book Review: A new biography about Arthur Koestler, The Literary and Political Odyssey of a Twentieth-Century Skeptic, by Michael Scammell made the cover. Koestler’s work, The Sleepwalkers, was one of the books that launched me during adolescence into a lifelong interest in the philosophy and history […]
Architecture in the Aughts
Blur, Expo 02, Yverdon-les-Bains, 2002. This sensational pavilion, which was designed by New York architects Diller + Scofidio, was the star of Switzerland’s Expo 02. A cat’s cradle of tensile steel, 20m high and 100m long, it brooded at the end of a steel-and-glass jetty over Lake Neuchatel. Inside, some 30,000 water jets created clouds […]