A Well Turned Phrase

It is useful to read certain authors before one realizes – either through one’s own or others’ critical diktats – that they should not in fact be read. Kipling floats in and out of fashion. When I encountered him I imagine he was pretty much out, but Just So Stories and the Jungle Books (titles whose destruction by Disney’s huns was still a future

Life

Eat at a local restaurant tonight. Get the cream sauce. Have a cold pint at 4 o’clock in a mostly empty bar. Go somewhere you’ve never been. Listen to someone you think may have nothing in common with you. Order the steak rare. Eat an oyster. Have a negroni. Have two. Be open to a world where you may not understand or agree with the person next

Death walks faster than the wind and never returns what he has taken

— From Hans Christian Andersen's "The Story of a Mother"

(She) was enthusiastically heterosexual.

—Eccentric Lives, The Daily Telegraph Book of 21st Century Obituaries.

Folk and blues musician Anthony Moser skips the careful case against AI and opts for a plain human response: being a hater. "Incoherent empty men want to sell me the chance to stop reading and writing and thinking, to stop caring for my kids or talking to my parents, to stop choosing what I do or knowing why I do it. Blissful ignorance and total

 It is officially the first day of fall. The leaves may have barely begun to turn, but, as Charlotte Mendelson reminds us, “ ’Tis the season of mist, nature’s Photoshop; trenchcoats; barley; licensed melancholy; munificence; and glorious rot.” It is a time when new growth ceases and gardens begin to wilt and shrivel. “After the hell of summer,

⁠⁠Roadtripping through the South is an experience that I associate with empty Arizona cans, endless stretches of interstate, Spotify, the occasional Hostess Zinger, and my compulsive noticing and reading-out-loud of every passing billboard. After a couple hundred such noticings of these advertising relics, the thematic frequent fliers become

The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.

--Bertrand Russell