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The History of English, in Ten(ish) Minutes
When I was a sophomore in high school — this was just a plain old everyday public high school, not a school for high-achieving nerds or anything — our English teacher let us write an end-of-year research paper on any topic we liked. I have no idea why, of all possible subjects, at the age [...]
Bringing Worlds Out from Within
[Video: Lista (The List), a short film by Paweł Łyczkowski. It won the 2010 "Best Film" Suzanne Award, for users of the Blender open-source animation and visual-effects software.] From whiskey river: Lao Tzu exhorts us to listen to the world “not with ears but with mind, not with mind but with spirit.” Some days I [...]
Midweek Music Break: Theme-Park Earworms
The Missus and I took a much-needed mini-vacation this past weekend, trekking off to central Florida for (among other things) our first visit to the other theme park in that neighborhood. We love amusement parks and fairs (county, state, you name it), but neither of us is a big roller-coaster fan; most of the rides at [...]
Knowing What You’re Looking At
[Image: graffiti artist Bansky visited a subway archway in central London, adding a caption to a wall which just happens to fall within the view of a surveillance camera.] From whiskey river: All men, at one time or another, have fallen in love with the veiled Isis whom they call Truth. With most, this has [...]
“An Echo That Did Not Die Away”
[Image: a communications "satelloon." For more information, see the note at the foot of this post.] From whiskey river: There have been times when I think we do not desire heaven but more often I find myself wondering whether, in our heart of hearts, we have ever desired anything else. You may have noticed that [...]
Midweek Music Break: Earworms of a 1950s Childhood
When The Boy was a boy*, he did not know that nursery rhymes and fairy tales and folk songs had already lived lives stretching back centuries. When The Boy was a boy, he imagined that each story, verse, and tune had been crafted just for him and for people like him, all within the last [...]
Not Trying Quite So Hard, But It Feels Right
[Image: "Comb of Retrospection," by Michael Leunig] From whiskey river: How I Would Paint Happiness Something sudden, a windfall, a meteor shower. No – a flowering tree releasing all its blossoms at once, and the one standing beneath it unexpectedly robed in bloom, transformed into a stranger too beautiful to touch. (Lisel Mueller, from Alive [...]
Where Worlds and Art Forms Overlap: The Icebook*
I feel somewhat at risk of turning this joint into one of those blogs which serve as dumping grounds for videos, rather than actual words. But some videos just demand circulation, y’know? This came to me by way of an email message from my great blog-friend, Froog, who just knew it would appeal to me. [...]
