It’s always a good day when Wolfgang Muthspiel, Scott Colley, & Brian Blade release a blistering new single & announce a new album 🎶

Spend a few days camping with Sam at McCarthy Beach State Park near Chisolm. A beautiful spot, and perfect weather for mountain biking at nearby Redhead Mountain. 🏕️

Current listening: Aaron Parks / Little Big, Live in Berlin 🎶

Currently reading: All Things Are Full of Gods by David Bentley Hart 📚

Finished reading: The Courage to Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi.

Some books feel like they’re written just for you. This one has some sections that I really needed to think through while reflecting on my life, the assumptions I tend to make about myself, & the way the world works in general.

Plus, I enjoyed learning about Alfred Adler, who was part of the same Vienna circle as Freud and his disciple Jung—but who reached very different conclusions about the human person & the role of psychology. 📚

Currently reading: The Courage to Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi 📚

Finished reading: The Son by Philipp Meyer.

This book is incredible—I see why some think it’s the novel of the century so far. It follows one remarkable Texas family for 150 years, telling the family’s story through the interwoven lives of, primarily, three of its members. 📚

Finished reading: Lacunae by Scott Cairns 📚

Finished reading: Effortless Mastery by Kenny Werner 📚

Currently reading: The Son by Philipp Meyer 📚

A clerihew for MacIntyre:

RIP, Alasdair MacIntyre, A Catholic who, with Marxist fire, Sought to heal the is/ought wound Inflicted by his fellow Scotsman, Hume.

Currently reading: Effortless Mastery by Kenny Werner 📚

Currently reading: Lacunae by Scott Cairns 📚

It’s the first day of summer break, & my kids just discovered Weird Al. So… it’s going to be a long summer 🫠

Finished reading: Perelandra by C.S. Lewis. Read this one, & Out of the Silent Planet, with my daughter. We’ve both loved both books, so it’s on to That Hideous Strength! 📚

Currently reading: The Marble Faun by Nathaniel Hawthorne 📚

Currently reading: The Lords of Limit: Essays on Literature & Ideas by Geoffrey Hill 📚

Really, Wordlebot? Really??

Current listening: Anouar Brahem’s beautiful, haunting new album After the Last Sky. Brahem is accompanied by two brilliant peers, Dave Holland on bass and Django Bates on piano. 🎵

Latest newsletter: The brilliant idiot & the wise fool: aphorisms on two ways of life

Grateful to have caught Bill Charlap at the Dakota tonight. The trio included the great Kenny Washington on drums and, unexpectedly for me, David Wong on bass.

An absolutely incredible set. Highlights were Charlie Parker’s scorching “Segments” & the encore, “Some Other Time.” 🎵

I wrote a short essay on Chinese architect Liu Jiakun for my newsletter. Liu, who won this year’s Pritzker Prize, is an architecture whose work I find stunningly beautiful.

Latest issue of my newsletter:

“The Wolrd is Run by Brilliant Idiots” and what we can learn from Holy Fools about how to respond.

One of the real problems in modern life is that people who are good at being civil lack strong convictions and people who have strong convictions lack civility.

RIP, Martin Marty.

The story of the foolish wiseman—on Thomas More, Niels Bohr, & the power of paradox in a black-and-white world.

Finished reading: Vita Contemplativa by Byung-Chul Han 📚

Currently reading: King Lear by William Shakespeare 📚

Finished reading: Concerning the Future of Souls by Joy Williams. Subtitle: 99 Stories of Azrael.

Holy smokes this is a cool book. Vintage Williams, wild & strange & unforgettable. 📚

Finished reading: Lord Emsworth and Others by P. G. Wodehouse 📚

Currently reading: Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges 📚

Currently reading: Concerning the Future of Souls by Joy Williams 📚

Two absolutely killer albumss released today. One could do worse than spend the weekend listening to these two. 🎵

Parables are strange; finding your life transformed into a parable, even stranger.

Boy do I wish I had been in Chicago last Friday 🎵

Currently reading: The Power Broker by Robert A. Caro.

It’s time. Let’s do this. 📚

It’s a glorious time to be an American tennis fan. Half of the US Open men’s & women’s semifinalists are American! Unreal. 🎾

Currently reading: All Things Are Full of Gods by David Bentley Hart 📚

Finished reading: Middlemarch by George Eliot 📚

Currently reading: Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake 📚

Currently reading: Range by David Epstein 📚

The power of journalism rises & falls inversely to journalists' belief in the power of journalism. The more journalists are convinced of their world-changing power, the less anyone listens. The more they just do their job, the more people tune in.

Get out there right now & watch Esperanza Spalding & Milton Nascimiento’s beautiful Tiny Desk (Home) Concert. A stunning collaboration between a true great of Brazilian jazz & a young musical genius. 🎵

Currently reading: The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron.

Oft recommended; I’m reading it & going through all the exercises with my mother. Grateful she suggested this idea! 📚

Current listening: Pat Metheny’s beautiful new solo guitar album, Moondial.

The album includes a beautiful version of “My Love & I”—but that’s redundant, since every version of “My Love & I” is beautiful. 🎵

Loving Rick Rubin’s two-part interview with Ezra Koenig of Vampire Weekend (my family’s favorite band).

The episodes dive deep into each of VW’s albums, which winds up being a tour of all kinds of music—Rubin & Koenig are both musical omnivores of the first order. 🔗 🎧🎵

Luke Burgis offers a reading list for creators & entrepreneurs.

Personally, I’d replace Mill & Emerson with Middlemarch & any Jane Austen. And add McGilchrist as the third book for this century, along with some poetry.

But it’s an excellent set of books nonetheless! 📚

Current listening: Ron Carter, All Blues.

Roland Hanna’s solo on “Light Blue” is a beautiful little miracle. 🎵

Finished reading: When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi.

What a remarkable book. I love academic memoirs, & this fits within that genre—but pushes well beyond it as well. It’s also a profound meditation on cancer, mortality, healthcare, poetry, faith, love, & family. Highly recommended. 📚

We’ve got a trip to Yellowstone & Grand Tetons coming up next month. Any recommendations for must-do hikes, must-see sights, etc? 🥾 🏕️

Currently reading: Middlemarch by George Eliot.

An old favorite. Profound from the first paragraph. 📚

Finished reading: Moonbound by Robin Sloan.

So great! Handed it off to my daughter—she’s 11; I’m sure she’ll enjoy it just as much. 📚

Finished reading: Night Train by A. L. Snijders.

Wonderful microstories, translated by Lydia Davis. Highly recommended. 📚

Currently reading: When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi 📚

Cleaned like a zillion ants out of our mailbox today. (!?!)

Now spending the afternoon creeped out by feeling like I’ve got tiny ants crawling all over me. 🐜🏡

Currently reading: Moonbound by Robin Sloan 📚

The pizzas turned out very well. I made four different pizzas, 5 pizzas of each style—turned out to be plenty to feed 40 people over a couple hours:

• Marinara
• Margherita
• Pepperoni + hot honey (pictured; the fan favorite)
• Prosciutto + arugula

🍕

Father’s Day Special:

Wordle 1,093 2/6

⬛⬛🟩🟨🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Prepping a whole lotta pizza for tomorrow… #pizzaparty 🍕

Jeff Koons and T.J. Maxx: a match made in heaven.

Want to read: Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake 📚

Thomas Chatterton Williams pens another chapter in the story of how every sport is breaking under the twin strains of global spectacle & algorithmic efficiency.

Two options: embrace it (sports betting, fantasy everything) or go hyper local (high school sports, minor leagues, pick-up games). 🔗🎾

Ran my first 10k this morning at the Fargo Marathon. I beat my goal, finishing in 54:25. More importantly, I discovered that these races are a blast and a great way to to structure my training toward a concrete goal. I’ll be back. 🏃💪

Our first pizza night with the wood-fired Ooni was a great success! Can’t wait to start using this amazing tool weekly. 🍕

Finished reading: Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford.

This book is incredible—it connects many of my interests: jazz, counterfactual American history, religion, noir; the characters are wonderfully unique; the plot is gripping. Highly recommended! 📚

Currently reading: Night Train by A. L. Snijders.

Very short stories translated from Dutch by Lydia Davis (who herself writes brilliant microfiction). 📚

Currently reading: The Shield of Achilles by W. H. Auden 📚

Currently reading: Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford 📚

I love the impulse toward community in the work of the great Japanese architect Riken Yamamoto, winner of this year’s Pritzker Prize.

But I find the reliance on concrete, glass, & stark metals off-putting—working against the goals of his projects. A lingering, cold modernism, despite the beauty.

Finished reading: The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu 📚

Currently reading: A Time to Keep Silence by Patrick Leigh Fermor 📚

Currently reading: Aspects of Truth by Catherine Pickstock 📚

Happy Feast of the Epiphany!

Our Rosca de Reyes turned out exceptionally well 😋🏡

I think this year would be a good year to listen to Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers straight through chronologically.

There’s a zillion albums, so I might not make it. But I can start. Tonight: Live at the Cafe Bohemia, volume 1. 🎶

Currently reading: If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler by Italo Calvino.

Christmas: the perfect time to reread old favorites. 📚

Finished reading: The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald

Another Penelope Fitzgerald book I love.📚

Currently reading: The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald 📚

Highland Advent vibes this morning. 🏡

Current listening: *The Incomparable Bola Sete 🎶

A new Geri Allen album??

Sure, it’s just a live recording, but I’m here all day for this one. Heck, here all year. 🎶

Finished reading: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel 📚

Great day at the used book store 📚

I’ve been working on an essay on Sam Bankman-Fried and Sam Altman for a couple weeks now. Today seemed like a good day to finish it.

Why are the traits they share—among others, naiveté, narcissism, love for humanity but only in the abstract, reducing complex realities to simple equations—so common?

I like the new Wikipedia app… but it doesn’t always get everything right:

Current listening: a new Arvo Pärt album, Tractus, featuring a new, chamber-choir arrangement of Pärt’s setting of words from a sermon of John Henry Newman. 🎶

Rest in peace, Terence Davies. 🎞️

The first film I saw of his was his relatively recent documentary about Liverpool, Of Time & the City—a film of great beauty, full of profound reflection on memory & how profoundly the world has changed since the 1960s.

Here’s a quotation that reflects his sensibility, from the NYT obituary linked above:

“The first thing that goes is subtlety. The first thing that goes is any kind of restraint or even wit sometimes. I don’t know how to deal with that in the modern world.”

No words strike fear into a Minnesota United fan’s heart quite like “must-win home game.” #COYL ⚽️

Currently reading: Your Face Belongs to Us by Kashmir Hill 📚

Currently reading: Toward the Winter Solstice by Timothy Steele 📚

Perfect night for a fire. A zillion stars in the cloudless sky. Some Wolfgang Muthspiel on the speaker. Life is good. 🏡

Finished reading: The Bible and Poetry by Michael Edwards.

A fascinating and very idiosyncratic look at Scripture, from an unexpected quarter: Edwards is a member of the Académie Française and one of the world’s leading Racine scholars. If you’ve ever wondered why so much of the Bible is poetry, and how that fact should influence your reading of Scripture, this is a very good starting point.

Plus, anything published by New York Review is worth reading at least once. 📚

Finished reading: Meet Me at the Lighthouse by Dana Gioia.

A delightful collection of poems, songs, & a few translations. I especially loved the closing sequence, “The Underworld.” I read “The Ballad of Jesús Ortiz” aloud to me daughter, & she loved that. 📚

Tyler Cowen draws attention to the remarkable life and work of the Catholic religious scholar R.C. Zaehner, whose Wikipedia page is, indeed, fascinating and wild. 📚

Currently reading: The Bible and Poetry by Michael Edwards 📚

Finished reading: Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury.

I love Bradbury’s simple, relentless enthusiasm for writing. 📚

A beautiful evening by the lake. I read; the kids built driftwood boats. 🏡

One should act like a man of thought, and think like a man of action.

~Henri Bergson, quoted by Iain McGilchrist in The Matter with Things 📚🏡

Can’t wait to dig into this one. 📚

Some days, you get lucky. Very, very lucky.

Wordle 785 2/6

⬛⬛🟩🟩⬛ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Current listening: Johnathan Blake, Passage. Blake is a master. Always brings the fire. 🎶

True confession: I’m so inept at using the MacOS Photos app that if I want to use a photo, I usually resort to just taking a screenshot of it instead. 😬

Do not hurry; do not rest.

~Goethe; h/t Annie Dillard 📚

Currently reading: Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury 📚

It’s incredible how many good book groups, seminars, & tutorials the Catherine Project is offering this fall—and all for free! I’d love to join them all. 📚

Currently reading: In Search of Lost Time Volume I Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust.

It’s been a decade or so. Just 25 pages in, I can’t believe how many gems I’ve already forgotten. 📚

Current listening: Tyshawn Sorey Trio, Continuing.

Four tracks, 53 minutes. As wide-ranging as ever for this group, which features Matt Brewer on bass and Aaron Diehl on piano. 🎶

This desk.

Click through for more detail—it’s worth it. Suddenly considering a trip to the Netherlands just to see it.

Finished reading: The This by Adam Roberts.

Lots to think about with this delightful book. Roberts calls it a Hegelian sequel to his Kantian book The Thing Itself. I think it can be equally read as a sort of hellish prequel to Purgatory Mount (is Paradise next?), or as a sci-do cautionary-tale companion to Nita Farahany’s The Battle for Your Brain.

In any case, science fiction at its strangest & best. 📚

A beautiful summer morning 🏡

Currently reading: The This by Adam Roberts 📚

Finished reading: Mansfield Park by Jane Austen.

Rather sobering to have finished it on Father’s Day. But, like all of Austen, full of wisdom: a reflection on good judgment. 📚

I just love these essays that so confidently tell me what my own brain is doing to me.

Undoubtedly this is a headline issue more than a content issue—I’ve read and learned from Mastroianni’s work in the past—but I don’t plan on finding out, in this case. 🧠

My friend Rick recently helped design a book of poems about Parkinson’s disease.

The book is written by John Foley and illustrated by the great Mary GrandPré of Harry Potter fame.

Download a copy for free here. Hope you find it encouraging! 📚

R.I.P., Astrud Gilberto—one of the most ethereal & beautiful of all singers, IMO. 🎶

There are some compelling resonances between Tara Isabella Burton’s New Atlantis essay “Rational Magic” and Luke Burgis’s essay for Wired, “The Three-City Problem”.

For starters, both identify how a Silicon Valley culture that thinks of itself as highly rationale is undergirded by a stranger ethos.

Currently reading: Mansfield Park by Jane Austen 📚

Well, gotta say I’m glad I forgot my Loons had a US Open Cup match tonight… Houston 4-0 MNUFC. 😳⚽️

NB, publishers: describing an author as a “Forbes 30 Under 30 scientist” makes me want to read their book much, much less. 📚

Current listening: Danish Rain, the new album from a duet of wonderful musicians: pianist Justin Kauflin and bassist Thomas Fonnesbæk. 🎶

A wonderful essay by Tara Isabella Burton in The New Atlantis on Effective Altruism, the rationalist and now post-rationalist online communities, and the turn they’ve taken toward the transcendent.

Paywalled, but TNA is well worth a sub for those interested in moral engagement with technology. 🔗

Current listening: Brian Blade, Mama Rosa.

I’ve loved this singer-songwriter-Gospel album from a world-class jazz drummer. 🎶

Finished reading: Laurus by Eugene Vodolazkin.

My second read; it’s as beautiful and profound as it was the first time through.📚

I’m heading to Chicago this weekend for a birthday celebration with my father & brother. I’m eager for some bookstore recommendations. Any advice, Chicagoans? 📚

Realizing I should be maintaining issues of my newsletter here on my blog, not just on Substack, in case things fall apart, as they tend to do. So I’ll start re-posting 1-2 a week.

The newsletter is on the ethical teachings of Jesus. It doesn’t assume any religious belief or perspective.

Austin Klein won’t be hiring a virtual assistant anytime soon. 🔗

R.I.P. Ahmad Jamal, one of the greatest and perhaps my absolute favorite jazz pianist.

My dad used to play “Stolen Moments” at night while I was going to sleep. I’ve loved Jamal ever since. 🎶 🔗

The best AI app wouldn’t be an everything app. It would be a nothing app—so smart it helped me do nothing on my screens and more in the real world. 🔗

Everything Iain McGilchrist has to say is worth considering, but I can’t recommend his conversation with Dark Mountain Project co-founder Dougald Hine highly enough.

It’s about climate change, the place of science in modernity, AI, and much more. 🔗

On Brad East’s blog, Denise Levertov’s Good Friday poem “On a Theme from Julian’s Chapter XX”:

Every sorrow and desolation He saw, and sorrowed in kinship.

✝️📚🔗

[Early book collectors] supported the lively culture of book hunting that still goes on, diminished but not dead yet, in the auction houses and antiquarian bookshops of New York, Boston and other cities.

Can this gentle, humane culture survive the attritions of social media and the carceral state? In a way, it already has.

~Anthony Grafton, in an delightful LRB review-essay of Denise Gigante’s new book. 📚

Yeesh. For Minnesota United fans, things are not looking good on the Bebelo front.

Fortunately, we’ve been playing shockingly well without him. #MNUFC #COYL ⚽️

Currently reading: The Secret Commonwealth by Robert Kirk

A gloriously strange book from 17th-century Scotland. 📚

Blue Note Records is absolutely crushing it lately: Julian Lage, Charles Lloyd’s trio of trios, Bill Frisell’s new quartet, Gerald Clayton’s Bells on Sand, Ethan Iverson’s Every Note is True: seems like all my fav new albums are Blue Note.

And this week, new Walter Smith III and Kendrick Scott. 🎵

Current listening: Charles Lloyd, Trio of Trios 🎵

Three fantastic trio albums, each with a different cast of musicians alongside Lloyd: Thomas Morgan & Bill Frisell; Anthony Wilson & Gerard Clayton; Julian Lage & Zakir Hussain.

Current listening: Charles Lloyd, Trio of Trios. 🎵

Three fantastic trio albums, each with a different cast of musicians alongside Lloyd: Thomas Morgan & Bill Frisell; Anthony Wilson & Gerard Clayton; Julian Lage & Zakir Hussain.

No world / wears as well as it should but, mortal or not, / a world still had to be built.

~Auden, “The Birth of Architecture”

What is mobile is always the most just.

~Robert Walser. So many great sentences in Walser. 📚

Every last silly little thing has its unspeakably swift justification, its good clever grounds.

~Robert Walser in 1907, writing about the Internet 📚

Jaron Lanier, being typically insightful:

“We have to say consciousness is a real thing and there is a mystical interiority to people that’s different from other stuff because if we don’t say people are special, how can we make a society or make technologies that serve people?”

The profile is titled, “The danger isn’t that AI destroys us. It’s that it drives us insane.” Which does certainly seem like a more likely possibility.

Then, in all labyrinthine economies

there are obscure nooks into which Authority never pokes a suspicious nose

~Auden, “The Horations”

What has become of us as a people that we can possess the beautiful only in dreams.

~Robert Walser

Currently reading: Berlin Stories by Robert Walser 📚

The cultivation of taste, in morals as well as in art, is neither snobbish nor elitist; it is, rather, the key means by which we emancipate ourselves from the tyranny of passions that the people who make our smartphone apps would like to see dominate us.

~Alan Jacobs, reflecting on David Hume & social media 🔗

I encountered a stunning book of photos on the Getty’s website today: Kazumasa Ogawa’s Some Japanese Flowers, from 1896.

19th-century photograph is always shocking & disorienting—how foreign, yet contemporary. 📚

Currently reading: The Battle for Your Brain by Nita A. Farahany 📚

Her contention is that control over our own inner life will become increasingly fraught in coming years, as advances in neurotech & pharma combine to create new ways of monitoring, interpreting, & responding to our brainwaves.

I’m only a couple chapters in, but she lays out so clearly how tech is building on-ramps to this surveillance—through gamification, virtual reality, & other developments that are pitched as innocuous & “free”.

Rest in peace, Kenzaburo Oe. My friend Caleb introduced me to Oe back in 2004 or 2005, and I came to love his novels A Personal Matter and An Echo of Heaven.

His Paris Review interview is truly fascinating.

Rest in peace, Wayne Shorter, one of the very greats. 🎶

Current listening: Kendrick Scott, Reverence.

A 2009 album featuring some incredible players: not just Scott, but Gerald Clayton, Walter Smith III, Mike Moreno, and Derrick Hodge. 🎶

Attention is how one disposes oneself to the world.

~Iain McGilchrist, The Matter with Things

The more I use Arc Browser the more I love it—and I’ve been using it a lot! It restores some joy, some delight, to using the Internet. 🔗

Start of a new season for my beloved MNUFC tonight. I’m not optimistic about the season, but I am looking forward to it! ⚽️ #COYL

Finished reading: How Big Things Get Done by Bent Flyvbjerg 📚

For the most part, a very good and useful book on project management—research grounded in reality, presenting some useful heuristics. Fans of Taleb & Kahneman/Tversky will like it.

Currently reading: Dubliners by James Joyce 📚

Chiefly, “The Dead.” Is there a more beautiful story?

Finished reading: Skin in the Game by Nassim Nicholas Taleb 📚

Currently reading: How Big Things Get Done by Bent Flyvbjerg 📚

Current listening: Chris Potter, Got the Keys to the Kingdom. 🎵

Absolutely scorching live set featuring a dream-team of some of my favorite musicians: not just Potter, but also Scott Colley on bass, Marcus Gilmore on drums, and Craig Taborn on piano. Highly recommended!

Currently reading: Night Train by A. L. Snijders; translated by Lydia Davis 📚

Reading stories about Davos attendees’ optimism, I’m reminded of Iain McGilchrist’s insight that our brains' left hemispheres—the blinkered perspective that dominates our modern world—are blithely optimistic, even in the face of significant disconfirmatory evidence. 🔗

Currently reading: War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy 📚

Currently reading: Skin in the Game by Nassim Nicholas Taleb 📚

Still excellent advice, on the whole, though I’m not sure what Auden would replace “Read The New Yorker” with now.

The result of more free time for the masses is not more leisure, as Aristotle conceived it, but more time to scroll social media, flick through online dating profiles, binge on Netflix, and/or work on what Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha call “The Startup of You.”

~Zohar Atkins

Finished reading: A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles 📚

Finished reading: The Nature of Oaks by Douglas W. Tallamy 📚

It seems like the people most awed by “generative AI” art are those least familiar with humanity’s greatest artistic achievements. Those most impressed by ChatGPT are least familiar with good writing, good philosophy.

Unfortunately, they’re the same ones who run Silicon Valley.

Don’t come at me with some “philosopher test” if Hegel’s not one of the possible results. Hegel should be the only possible result. Sheesh.

My friend Patrick worked with his daughters to make an awesome collaborative card game—Nature Kin—celebrating San Diego’s biodiversity. Check it out!

This World Cup’s group-stage matchday 3 has produced absolutely scintillating, wild, edge-of-your-seat soccer. So, of course, FIFA is considering a bunch of really stupid ways to destroy it. ⚽️

World Cup update: 🇺🇸 and 🇦🇷 are through, so I’m happy. I can enjoy the rest of the group stage without stress. ⚽️

Not surprised—it’s a great album! 🎶

Alan Jacobs on your lies, and mine:

In any given community, there will be a profound divide between those who believe that the most dangerous lies are the ones told by our enemies and those who believe that the most dangerous lies are the ones we tell ourselves.

Here. 🔗

Excited for 🇧🇪-🇨🇦. I spent 90 terrifying minutes several years ago watching Alphonso Davies tear apart #MNUFC at TCF Bank Stadium. I’d love to see Canada get a victory today. ⚽️

So far, this World Cup suggests that it might not be quite the disaster I expected to expand to 48 teams. Many of these smaller and lower-ranked teams can more than keep up—and their fans are showing up in a big way. ⚽️

Jacqui Oakley and Warren Barton are hands-down the best commentators in this Fox squad for the World Cup. They’re, you know, insightful on each team’s players & tactics. They were great yesterday for 🇩🇰 – 🇹🇳 & they are equally good this morning for 🇲🇦 – 🇭🇷. ⚽️

I’ve loved Argentina since I studied abroad there in 2005. That’s a crushing defeat. But huge credit to Saudi Arabia—they were excellent. Terrible passing in the final third for Argentina; incredible performance defensively by the Saudis. ⚽️

¡Vamos Argentina! 🇦🇷⚽️

Halfway through 🇺🇸- 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿, I’m thrilled. We’re playing great; creating some good chances. I’m especially impressed by Musah, Sargent, Jedi, and Ream. Beautifully taken goal by Weah. Let’s go! ⚽️

My heart-over-head bracket. Really had to get speculative to get the final I wanted… 🇧🇷- 🇦🇷 ⚽️

Everyone can’t look away from the story of the spectacular failure of crypto wunderkind/slacker dude SBF. Massive wealth, massive hubris, all gone in an instant. It’s a story made for Michael Lewis.

Somehow, amazingly, Lewis has already been embedded with SBF for 6 months.

All of humanity’s problems stem from our inability to sit quietly in a deer stand alone.

~ Pascal, I think

Currently reading: The Nature of Oaks by Douglas W. Tallamy 📚

Decided recently to start a newsletter about Jesus' teachings. It won’t be religious, or even really very spiritual. I’ll simply consider how Jesus' teaching might help us live well in our troubled times.

Tomorrow, the Premier League starts a six-week mad dash prior to the World Cup; some teams will play more than twice a week during this stretch. There are going to be more injuries than ever before, during, & after the World Cup. But at least FIFA gets its way! ⚽️

Is there any better illustration of Iain McGilchrist’s theory of the left brain’s colonization of our thinking than this post (& the paper it cites), about why philosophers spend too much time studying their dead predecessors. Surely they’re both joking, right? Right? 🔗

Sure, I’d love to be your start-up’s Chief Metaverse Officer. Here’s my cover letter:

I solemnly swear that I will do everything in my power to foil your ambitions to create a metaverse. Please call or email if you have any questions or you’d like to discuss the position further.

Saddened to learn of Hilary Mantel’s sudden and untimely death at the age of 70. Her Wolf Hall novels are brilliant; what vivid historical imagination. R.I.P. 📚

So, apparently there are 20 quadrillion ants in the world.

That’s a cool 1.5 million per person. 🐜 🔗

Current listening: Brian Blade & the Fellowship Band, Season of Changes 🎶

Finished reading: The Elementary Particles by Michel Houellebecq. Profoundly bleak, even for Houellebecq, though there are some moments of beauty, particularly late in the novel. 📚

Finished reading: Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler. An amazing novel of revolutionary consciousness, conscience, & truth. 📚

Finished reading: The Life We’re Looking For: Reclaiming Relationship in a Technological World by Andy Crouch.

A wise essay on the importance of instruments, households, and history in resisting the technological idols of our age.📚

Finished reading: Purgatory Mount by Adam Roberts 📚

Finished reading: Bells In Winter by Czeslaw Milosz 📚

In life and work alike, his contradictions are pressed together like layers in metamorphic rock. It is in the nature of monoliths not to grow old.

~Alex Ross on Thomas Mann, in the New Yorker. My favorite Mann is The Magic Mountain—it speaks with clarity to our world. 🔗📚

Thanks to MinnPost for publishing this rich, illuminating portrait of MSP drummer Dave King (of The Bad Plus, Happy Apple, & Julian Lage’s current trio, among many other groups & projects). 🔗🎶🥁

Pulitzer Committee: Award Duke Ellington the 1965 Pulitzer Prize he was denied. 🔗🎶

Max Richter, giving Auden pride of place in his Recomposed Four Seasons headshot. (The album is very good.) 🎶📚

“The Technocrat’s Dilemma” is as concise a framing of our current “misinformation” crisis as we’re likely to get: “The technocratic response to misinformation and conspiracy theory only exacerbates the problem and further validates the most extreme reactions.” 🔗

I basically agree with Gruber’s take on Netflix: Netflix would be better-served by focusing more on quality, less on quantity.

But that raises a question Gruber’s not too interested in exploring (and I’m not really, either, if I’m honest!): what is “quality”? 🔗📺

I relished Roy Foster’s Conversation with Tyler on Irish history, economics, and culture. I read Foster’s Modern Ireland years ago, and I’m eager now to read his books on Yeats and Heaney. 📚 🔗 🎧

“We’re moving towards disaster, guided by a false image of the world; and no one realizes.”

~ Michel Houellebecq, from an excellent profile by Justin E.H. Smith 🔗📚

Glad to see a third-party candidate enter the MN governor’s race. I don’t expect I’ll agree with the whole platform. But I agree with the principle: our current parties are broken beyond repair. 🔗🗳

The world needs more Cavafy 📚

On the absurd counter-productivity of cancelling Russian culture. 🔗

The last thing we need is to assume that once we are confident in our position, there is no more thinking to be done.

In order for people to use social media responsibly—i.e., not get addicted—we essentially have to use these platforms in ways that they were not designed to be used.

~from a review of Chris Martin’s Terms of Service 🔗

Finished reading: Tradition and Apocalypse by David Bentley Hart 📚

Unsurprisingly if you’ve read much DBH, this is a very strange book. I’d highly recommend chapters 1, 6, & 7 for a compelling vision of Christian belief & practice oriented not just to the past but to the future. The middle chapters on Newman & Blondel? Quite dry by comparison.

Finished reading: London’s Fields by Mark Waldon 📚 ⚽️

A delightful oral history looking at some of London’s football clubs: their histories, rivalries, grounds, & fan bases. I most enjoyed chapters on Orient, Millwall, Brentford, Wimbledon, Fulham, & Charlton—clubs that don’t get much attention state-side.

Everything about central bank digital currency (CBDC) is the stuff of totalitarian nightmare.

~A powerful essay against CBDCs 🔗

Expert ≠ leader (or vice versa):

The pandemic has shown us the dangers of expert rule, and the failures of political and institutional leaders to heed them. It has also demonstrated, through its absence, what good governance might look like.

~Joseph E. Davis in The New Atlantis

When was the last time I link to a Slate article? Maybe never.

In any case, their “Best Jazz Albums of 2021” is excellent—introduced me to a number of albums I hadn’t yet heard; all the ones I have heard I also loved, especially the Mingus and the Shepp/Moran. 🎵 🔗

Tyler Cowen’s conversation with biographer-historian Ruth Scurr is delightful—bookstores, Cambridge, finding a book’s form, & much more. 🔗🎙

Beautiful light in my office this morning.

A fresh layer of snow overnight + fire-red sunrise.

Incredibly excited for the future of Slant Books. They have some wonderful titles coming in their first year as an indie not-for-profit press. 🔗📚

R.I.P, Robert Bly, one of Minnesota’s great poets. I’ll remember him most for his translations of Thomas Tranströmer; among if not the first translations into English of the incredible Swedish poet. 📚 🔗

A beautiful obituary of Chinese philosopher and aesthetician Li Zehou. 🔗

This sunrise this morning… unreal. 💥 🏡

A first post in my shameless theft of Robert‘s Last/Next notebook category. I’ll enjoy looking back on this in a few years. 📓

Daniel A. Kaufman defends “The Good Old Liberal Consensus” against its foes on both right and left. H/t to my friend Bharat. 🔗

Currently reading: The Future of Money: How the Digital Revolution is Transforming Currencies and Finance by Eswar S. Prasad 📚

This is a wonderful appreciation of Norm MacDonald—the best I’ve read so far. 🔗

“Destiny waits in the hands of God, not in the hands of statesmen / Who do, some well, some ill, planning and guessing, / Having their aims which turn in their hands in the pattern of time.”

~T.S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral

MNUFC old-timer Brent Kallman provides the context behind the “Nicest Rivalry in Sports” moniker. Spoiler alert: it’s not so nice. ⚽️

Another beautiful sunrise on Rish Lake🏡

Current listening: the Danish String Quartet’s Prism III 🎶

R.I.P., great author, publisher, and literary scholar Roberto Calasso 📚 🔗

Amen: “Simone Biles Doesn’t Exist To Make America Proud” 🔗

In “The Future is a Decentralized Internet,” Olaf Carlson-Wee explains the theory behind DAOs and other blockchain-based networks. I’ve been exploring these ideas through the 1729 project. 🔗

There’s no world in which I sign up for a newsletter hosted by Bulletin, just like there’s no world in which I ever conduct a transaction on Diem.

Zuckerberg’s models of leadership are the 19th century imperialists.

Currently reading: Bill Evans: How My Heart Sings by Peter Pettinger 📚

Stop whatever you’re doing and go listen to Glenn Loury’s podcast conversation with Cornel West. H/t to my friend Pete. 🎧

Current listening: Squint, jazz guitarist Julian Lage’s new album, which features the trio Lage has been playing with lately: Minnesotan Dave King on drums and bassist Jorge Roeder. 🎶

Current listening: Another Land by Dave Holland, featuring Robin Eubanks on guitar and Obed Calvaire on drums. 🎵

Weekend project: cleaning out the garage, the last holdout/dumping-ground from our Oct move. Wish I had a “before” shot—believe it or not, this is a major improvement! 🏡

A beautiful sunrise over Rush Lake this morning. #nofilter 🏡

I’m not interested in the decision of the Facebook “oversight board” on Trump. A foregone conclusion from an inconsequential body.

I’m more interested in the decision of the general public to reject Facebook and Twitter entirely. Not a foregone conclusion, but one I hope for.

It was a beautiful foggy morning at Whispering Woods 🏡

Currently reading: The Master and His Emissary by Iain McGilchrist 📚

The European Super League™️ Sponsored by JPMorgan Chase® is an affront to soccer fans around the world. I certainly won’t watch it.

And I’m glad I don’t support a team that is joining it—because I’d have to seriously reconsider my support for that club. ⚽️

Dropped yesterday: Uneasy by Vijay Iyer with Linda May Han Oh & Tyshawn Sorey. Three jazz musicians at the absolute pinnacle of their instruments. It’s a beautiful album. 🎶

Robert Pogue Harrison reviews several recent books by and about the wonderful Shirley Hazzard. 📚

As she once remarked to me, were Virgil to sail into [the Bay of Naples] today, he would recognize all the lineaments of his adoptive city.

Freddie deBoer’s Substack has been excellent lately. From a recent post of thoughts for new writers:

For a long time now media has been overtaken by a cult of expression which forbids any style or mode other than contemptuous blank irony.

The NYT obit for Adam Zagajewski is quite touching.

I remember talking with a peer at a conference. She taught with A.Z. at the University of Houston. She spoke glowingly of him: “Adam is such a sweet, wonderful man.” He was clearly a colleague of hers, not the superstar. 📚

RIP Adam Zagajewski, my favorite contemporary poet. 📚

Your annual reminder that Geri Allen’s A Child is Born is the pinnacle of Christmas jazz, and the title track is sublime. 🎶

Busy morning on the river

My favorite year-end list is always Ted Gioia’s 100 favorite albums of the year. I guarantee you’ll find something excellent you didn’t previously know about.

(If you think 100 albums isn’t quite enough, well, he includes 100 honorable mentions as well.) 🎶

Out this week: Songs from Home, beautiful solo piano from Fred Hersch. 🎶

A beautiful day to prep the garden for winter. 🏡

You think it is helpful having a fluorescent praying mantis coming into their office, telling them about German philosophy? Do you think that’s helpful? I can tell you, it’s not helpful.

~Alex Karp, Palantir CEO, profiled in the NYT Magazine 🔗

Currently reading: Montaigne: Life Without Law by Pierre Manent 📚

Moving day. Our first day of snow for the season, too. 🏡

Currently reading: Jane Austen: Writing, Society, Politics by Tom Keymer 📚

UMN professor of history Jon Butler has a fascinating new book out: God in Gotham: The Miracle of Religion in Modern Manhattan. According to an interview with Publishers Weekly, the book “explores the rise of religious pluralism in Manhattan between 1880 and 1960." I’m in. 📚

Coffee + grading while listening to Mahler’s Sympony No. 5, prompted by this touching anecdote from Alex Ross. 🎶 ☕️ 🔗

I watched The Booksellers this evening. It’s a delightful documentary about the passionate folks in the rare-book industry. Some mournful notes, but also some hopeful ones. Overall, a delight. Streaming now on, err, Amazon Prime. 📚 🎞

Here’s 58.5 hours of Glenn Gould playing Bach for y’all. See ya next week. 🎶

It’s finally Minnesota’s turn in the Atlantic’s series of photographs from each of the 50 states. 🔗 📸

Catching up on some soccer highlights: Alphonso Davies had a ridiculous assist for Bayern in their 8-2 destruction of Barcelona in the Champions League quarterfinals. If I were Nèlson Semedo I wouldn’t show my face in public for a few weeks… ⚽️🔥

At the very center of his identity, Kushner is a Good Son. He’s run the country in a spirit of filial devotion to an implacable father. It’s a role that he thrives at playing, because he’s spent his whole life rehearsing for it.

~Jared Kushner, profiled in The Atlantic 🔗

Just behind the kingdom that failed ran a nice little river. It was a clear, lovely stream, and many fish lived in it. Weeds grew there, too, and the fish ate the weeds.

~Haruki Murakami, “The Kingdom That Failed” 🔗 📖

Tonight’s MNUFC win shows a deep team that’s well-coached. Some of our best players—Opara, Molino, Metanire—were out, but we dominated a surging San Jose team. And as usual, Hassani Dotson dominates wherever he plays. Can’t wait for the Adrian Heath revenge match against Orlando! ⚽️

In the years to come, New York and the United States would eventually recognize and embrace Derek Walcott. The disappointment of this early encounter with New York would be replaced by a fuller and more satisfactory relationship with the city.

~Walcott in NYC (h/t 3QD) 🔗 🇱🇨

“Same as it ever was”: On heaven & the Talking Heads 🔗

The traditional imagery of heaven is ribbon-wreathed and rococo, but “Heaven” is almost severe in its simplicity.

A delightful story about an initially failed, but remarkably persistent, fantasy writer:

Brandon Sanderson: ‘After a dozen rejected novels, you think maybe this isn’t for you’ 🔗

The promise of politics is that, within and through our differences, some form of common life can be discovered. But if the process of discovery is to be faithful, hopeful, and loving, we must render ourselves vulnerable to others we don’t understand.

~Luke Bretherton 📚

Weekend project: building new beds for the boys. All that remains is to add a bed skirt to cover up those screws. 🔨

Morgan Meis on a highly questionable paraphrase of Auden in the NYT: “We must assist one another or die”?

Ahhh… back in the outdoor office at last.

R.I.P., Lee Konitz.

Here’s jazz pianist Ethan Iverson’s tribute to Konitz, insightful as always.

A sure way to establish enduring significance as a thinker is to combine sophistication with carefully constructed ambiguity and, if necessary, outright contradiction.

~ “Can Schmitt’s Political Theology Be Redeemed?”

(But it depends on how you define enduring.)

Today (Mon 6 Apr) at noon CST: “Christian Ethics & Pandemic Ethics”.

My colleague Pilar’s 86-year-old father has been hospitalized with covid-19 in Spain.

His last wish is to find a friend of his from Folkstone, Kent, England. I’m posting an article about his search here just in case anyone can help.

A stunning New York Times photo-essay on how coronavirus has devastated Bergamo, Italy.

In high school, my family hosted an Italian exchange student. His hometown? Bergamo. I never imagined it would return to my mind, or enter the global consciousness, in such a tragic way. 🔗

How Texas supermarket chain H-E-B has prepared better than just about anyone for the pandemic. 🔗

Probably also been reading some Taleb. 📚

I sense a lucrative consulting career in the near future for Justen Noakes, H-E-B’s “director of emergency preparedness.” 💰💰💰

There is no afterwards. 🔗

A profound, honest reflection on COVID-19 and our mortality. Written for Leonard J. DeLorenzo’s students at Notre Dame, but applicable to all:

The call in this season is to throw off the illusion of invulnerability and live together in truth.

Sunday Morning Biscuit-Making

Singers, among many others, have had their livelihoods cancelled or postponed indefinitely due to COVID-19.

But it turns out you can still make beautiful music together virtually. Here’s my sister-in-law singing Mauricio Duruflé’s Ubi Cartas, as part of a virtual octet. 🎶

In my extra reading time these days, I’ve been taking @ayjay‘s suggestion to read essays and short stories to heart by reading Chekhov & Montaigne. Also revisiting an old favorite, The Imitation of Christ. 📚

🔗 2,500 museums you can visit virtually

I’m planning on visiting many museums in this way with my kids in the days & weeks to come. 🎨 🖼

My selections from our trip the Shoreview Public Library today. Looking forward to some reading time over the next few days off… but I may have overestimated just how much time I’ll have. 📚

DL: 270x3 OHP: 102.5x5 🏆

Sq: 225x6 BP: 180x3 🏆

Learning to play the piano without a piano 🔗🎶

This is a remarkable story, though disappointingly brief.

OHP: 110x3 🏆

The Poverty of Economics & The Wealth of Religions: an essay on the limits of the economic analysis of religion. Unsurprisingly, when you struggle to define the object of your analysis, the analysis isn’t particularly illuminating. 🔗

I’ve never like Chelsea FC—I’ve actively disliked them, in fact. But now, with Pulisic playing—playing well—and with the funny, sharp Frank Lampard managing, I’m happier to see them succeeding. And I’m certainly glad to cheer for them when they’re playing Manchester City. ⚽️

Nothing too surprising in MNUFC’s contract-deadline-day decisions… other than the club unceremoniously cutting loose Miguel Ibarra, one of our best & longest-tenured players. At the very least, letting him go for nothing seems like bad business. ⚽️

Wendell Berry’s essay “The Pleasures of Eating”—beautifully illustrated and with a new introduction by Alice Water—has just been republished by Emergence Magazine.

I was in Fargo for a couple days for my mom’s birthday. While there, I enjoyed an all-too-rare gift: an hour of free time to play jazz with my dad.

Our set list:

• Midnight Mood
• Little Waltz
• Stolen Moments
• Lucky Southern
• Autumn in New York

🎶

Silence & Music: two of my favorite things. Also the name of a beautiful album by the Gabrieli Consort. 🎶

Daylight savings time: my semi-annual reminder that the government delights in tormenting parents.

I voted today after work. The poll workers seemed genuinely surprised when I walked in—I bet fewer than a dozen ballots were cast at my precinct today.

In defense of my neighbors, the only item on the ballot was the school board; 3 candidates were running for 3 open seats.

Lots of news regarding my beloved MN United today ⚽️:

• Rookie defender Chase Gasper called up to the USMNT
• A front-office reorganization sees coach Adrian Heath take on GM duties
• Teenage DP Thomás Chacon loves parrillada

Early morning nature hike. 📷🍁

MInnesota United ⚽️ declined contract options on five players today:

• Carter Manley
• Collin Martin
• Wilfried Moimbé-Tahrat
• Ally Hamis Ng’anzi
• Rasmus Schuller

I’m not too surprised, though I am excited to see who they bring in. It’s going to be a long offseason…

A fall week in Minnesota. 80° ➡️ 30°.

I’ve been intrigued by Derek Parfit’s photos of Venice and St. Petersburg since learning of his hobby in this New Yorker profile. Now it looks like a selection will be published as part of the aptly named exhibit Derek Parfit: The Photos. 🔗 📷

Autumn Leaf

One of Ruskin’s early lessons in The Elements of Drawing is to draw a leaf, as carefully and accurately as possible. Here’s my lunch-hour effort. 📚 🎨

I hadn’t heard of Inktober till it was mentioned in the Micro.blog community. But I recently decided to work on my drawing skills, and this seems a great time to do it. #GrowthMindset

So incredibly proud of my brother Andrew Kaul for launching a new design studio, Buddy-Buddy.

He and his friend and colleague Ross Bruggink are incredibly hard-working, talented, and—above all—wonderful people. Best wishes, you two, for many successful years!

Recently attempted, & abandoned 📚:

• David Graeber, Bullshit Jobs: A Theory (should’ve stayed an article)
• Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, & Apricot Cocktails (I love Bakewell’s book on Montaigne—but I just don’t care about the existentialists)

Current reading 📚:

• David Bentley Hart, That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation
• P. G. Wodehouse, Right Ho, Jeeves
• Kim Stanley Robinson, Aurora

These two pieces complement each other quite nicely:

First, in FiveThirtyEight: “The Christian Right Is Helping Drive Liberals Away From Religion”

Second, in Politico: “‘Someone’s Gotta Tell the Freakin’ Truth’: Jerry Falwell’s Aides Break Their Silence” 🔗

Morning dinosaur-puzzle time. 📷

A day when one’s surroundings reflect one’s heart: dreary & a bit deflated.

If you use Apple Music and you like top jazz, give my ¡¡¡ Top Jazz !!! playlist a listen. (Shuffle mode recommended.)

With 690 tracks of great jazz music, there are few better ways to spend the next 72 hours. 🎶

I made an Apple Music playlist of Hans Castorp’s favorite music in the “Fullness of Harmony” chapter of The Magic Mountain. (Full disclosure: there’s lots of opera.)

Amazing that it’s so easy to enjoy the same music that a fictional character listened to 110 years ago! 📚 🎶

Today’s listening: on a recommendation from my father, Pat Methany’s Still Life (Talking), a Latin-jazz-fusion album. Like a lot of Methany’s music, it’s strange, beautiful, a bit surreal, heavily produced. 🎶

I really like Ezra Klein’s podcast about half the time. He’s fair-minded, listens carefully, asks good questions—but only when interviewing people he disagrees with. That said, his interview with Stacey Abrams is still very good, because she’s so articulate & thoughtful.

I’m excited to be co-leading a reading group on Thomas Mann’s wonderful novel The Magic Mountain this summer. The novel is truly delightful: long, funny, and strange; a novel that explores pre-WWI Europe. If you’re looking for a big book to read this summer, take a look! 📚

A beautiful day at the office.

It was a beautiful morning for a bike ride to school—perfect, in fact.

Brad Mehldau’s new album, Finding Gabriel, is apparently the fruit of an intense reading of the Bible. Its compositions are inspired by passages from the wisdom literature and the minor prophets. Unsurprisingly, then, it’s wild, wide-ranging, and beautiful. 🎹 🎶

I’d listen to Clifford Jordan’s Glass Bead Games just to have a chance to look at the gorgeous cover art again. But the music is even more exceptional than the typography! 🎶 🎷

I wanted to create something useful and practical, you see… And since I also loved books, I was determined that they be as beautiful as possible. That’s all there is to it.

~ Jacques Schiffrin, qtd. in “On Founding One of Literature’s Most Beautiful Collections” 🔗 📚

Today’s listening: gotta be the new Vampire Weekend album, Father of the Bride. 🎶

Publicly manifested prosperity might well hide a deeper sorrow than we at first could imagine.

~ Fr. James V. Schall, on the moral vision of Samuel Johnson’s essays 🔗 📚

I’m re-reading a favorite novel, Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, preparing for a reading group this summer.

Looking for a good summer read? I’d highly recommend MM—you can’t go wrong with a long, philosophical novel about time, sickness, & death. (It’s funny, too!) 📚

I’ve been listening to a lot of Third Stream recently. So far, though, nothing I’ve found has come close to the depth & beauty of Sketches of Spain. 🎶 🇪🇸

Here’s a delightful symposium on personal libraries. The best entries, in my opinion, are those from Sarah Ruden & Peter Travers.

The symposium inspires me to write the story of my own personal library. I’d love to read others from the microblog community, as well. 📚

A disappointingly short, but still worthwhile, portrait of editorial illustrator Anna Parini, whose striking work has been all over the place of late. 🔗

Recommended: this excellent review of a book I plan to read as soon as possible: Martin Hägglund’s This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom. 📚

I finally cancelled my Twitter account. It was time—I had my fill of toxic nastiness & virtue-signaling (later than many). Very glad to have an independent, thoughtfully designed platform in Micro.blog.

I haven’t seen The Green Book, and don’t plan to, but still highly recommend reading Ethan Iverson on Don Shirley over at the New Yorker’s culture desk. 🎬 🎶

Grateful for some time this morning to read by the fire. More grateful still for a new book by a favorite poet.

The incomparable Brian Phillips is featured on the latest episode of Bookworm, alongside man-eating tigers, a man-eating-tiger-hunting man, death on the Iditarod, and Impossible Owls.

“How Facebook Deforms Us” - a thorough, thoughtful review by LM Sacasas of Siva Vaidhyanathan’s Antisocial Media.

Just discoereved @motyar’s MarkShow: Markdown to Slideshow app. It’s wonderful! I lesson-plan in Markdown, & have been looking for a tool like this forever. Thank you!

I read a wonderful novel tonight, Patrick DeWitt’s very dark & very comedic “tragedy of manners,” French Exit. (h/t the display stand at the local public library.) 📚

I hadn’t heard of translator Anthea Bell until I read her obituary yesterday. But then I realized that the day before, I had started one of her translations: of Stefan Zweig’s The World of Yesterday. So far, the book is profound, tragic, & absolutely captivating. 📚

A wonderful short essay on soccer & politics in Brazil, from Andrew Downie in the London Review of Books: Sócrates & Brazilian Democracy.

I work with a lot of different foreign languages, & Korean is my favorite, hands down. The font we use makes it look like hieroglyphics from the future.

Everything you need to know about Facebook’s understanding of journalism—in one useful ad!

Happy 85th birthday to the great Wayne Shorter! We mere mortals can celebrate by reading Ethan Iverson on Shorter’s transcendental year, 1964.

While you read, listen to his albums from that year: Night Dreamer, Juju, & Speak No Evil. 🎂📚🎶

Craigslist purchase of the year. $30!

In a remarkable essay for NYT Magazine, Ilya Kaminsky revisits Odessa, city of his birth.

Time & silence, Tolstoy’s ears, fathers & mothers & sons, WWII, the essay is about everything, & nothing. (“When I say the word nothing, I name something that is there.”)

The vast majority of electricity used in the world’s data centres comes from non-renewable sources, and as their numbers rapidly increase, there are no guarantees that this will change.

~ John Harris, “Our phones and gadgets are now endangering the planet”

Thoreau in Minnesota. I had no idea about this voyage of Thoreau’s; thanks, @rnv, for the link!

A sobering look at how tech companies conquered America’s cities, by the excellent Farhad Manjoo. As if I needed any more reasons to move to the country…

Friends in Europe: there is some excellent jazz coming your way this summer. The Billy Hart Quartet (Hart, Ben Street, Mark Turner, and Ethan Iverson) is touring Europe with Joshua Redmon this summer. Make time for this group! 🎶

Trump’s description of his parallel reality unwittingly calls to mind his most reckless and destructive actions, and it shows how oblivious he is to their consequences.

~ Daniel Larison has patiently chronicled the foreign-policy implications of Trump’s reckless presidency.

Please read my friend Bharat Ranganathan’s essay on Scripture, immigration, and Christian ethics. It’s a good overview of why Jeff Sessions’s comments were so deeply misguided.

So excited for the World Cup, starting today. ⚽️

• My prediction for the final: 🇦🇷 3:2 🇧🇷
• Dark horses: 🇹🇳, 🇨🇷
• And I can’t help but hope that 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 will have a great Cup, at least making it to the quarter finals.

Michael Dirda, typically excellent, recommends two recent books on Stoicism and ancient philosophy more broadly.

H/T to him for referring to Farnsworth’s Classical English Rhetoric and Classical English Metaphor, both of which I’d somehow never heard of before tonight. 📚

View from the desk this morning.

I’m a sucker for gossip & insider info on editors & publishing. This NYT piece on TLS editor Stig Abell was esp. delightful in uncovering Abell’s MN connections—I trust he’s also now an #MNUFC supporter.

Finished my first Muriel Spark novel this morning, Aiding and Abetting, and greatly enjoyed its very dark comedy. I will certainly read more of her. Look for some, er, Spark notes here soon.

This morning’s listening: the Cedar Walton Trio’s Ironclad: Live at Yoshi’s (Apple Muisc link), featuring what is surely some of the greatest album cover art of all time.

All holy books are works of fiction.

Saw this bumper sticker today (on the way to church, of course). I disagree with some of this dude’s core assumptions—especially regarding the nature, truth, and value of fiction!

My good friend Brad wrote about Mississippi’s Yazoo River, where attempts to prevent flooding threaten to have dramatic unintended consequences elsewhere in the river basin.

Just wrote a long post on awkwardness in Vodolazkin’s “novel” Laurus — mjkaul.com/2018/05/0…

From the NYRB, a fascinating essay on Berenice Abbott, jazz-age photographer in NYC and Paris.

Time, place, and circumstance: they are like three balls that you toss in the air, and they control your life.

An exceptional essay by Garnette Cadogan, “Due North”—an oddly edited, but also delightful and profound, essay on walking NYC from the Upper East Side to the South Bronx.

These photos of Lake Baikal are absolutely stunning (though I could do without any of the ones with people in them).

Addendum to my Cecil Taylor post: Ethan Iverson’s essay on Taylor is remarkable, and does justice to Taylor’s sui generis work.

Like every post on Iverson’s blog, it’s essential reading.

I’m finally starting Eugene Vodolazkin’s Laurus, in anticipation of the Anselm House book night in a week and a half. So far (50 pp in), it’s wonderfully strange, its medieval-modern form heavily dependent on pastiche and parataxis for its effects. I’ll hopefully write more soon.

The a-fore-quoted interview with Cecil Taylor harmonizes with this interview with Ursula K. LeGuin, which begins with a lengthy and fascinating discussion of rhythm and grammar, the foundations of LeGuin’s own remarkable craft.

I recommend this conversation in Democracy on whether political parties are dying or strengthening, though its conclusion—that parties are essentially content-less platforms—shouldn’t surprise anyone who lived through the last presidential election.

Robin Sloan’s Sourdough: like Mr Penumbra, simply delightful. I’m half done, and can’t put it down. Highly recommended!

Alan Jacobs makes a powerful and persuasive argument for the open web in The Hedgehog Review:

We need to revivify the open Web and teach others—especially those who have never known the open Web—to learn to live extramurally: outside the walls.

A wonderful essay in the TLS on Arnold as poet—his (deliberate) awkwardness, off-rhymes, and the “poetrylessness” of the Victorian age.

Robert Caro’s responses in this NYRB interview are profound, fascinating, and inspiring—as is the portrait of him at his typewriter.

This delightful essay from Sven Birkerts describes his time with a trio of poet-pals who lived & taught in Boston in the 80s: Seamus Heaney, Joseph Brodsky, & (especially) Derek Walcott.

More from that essay on Paul Thomas Anderson:

Such restorative attachments are one response to the epidemic of spiritual hunger and spiritual crisis in Anderson’s American West, where the promise of Manifest Destiny had trailed off into the sea.

Imagine if the New York Review of Books had hired a slightly stoned Edwardian fop as art director and you’ve got … Rolling Stone at its point of highest development.

~ Andrew Ferguson, on Jann Wenner

Very proud of my sister-in-law, Krista Costin, who is performing Bach’s Christmas Oratorio with the MN Orchestra.

Snack time, listening to and imitating Auntie @kristacostin live on #classicalmpr. Sounds wonderful! #auntikrista #bach

This interview with Sonny Rollins is amazing.

The idea of jazz is so spiritual, and it has such great qualities, that it will always withstand whatever the larger culture is.

I loved fishing and silence. Walking in the hills…. I didn’t talk much. Had opinions about everything. Life and death. Good and evil. I was a film buff. Loved music. I’d stopped reading contemporary novels. More than anything, I loathed half-hearted, spineless people.

Tonight’s listening: Emerson String Quartet, Chaconnes and Fantasias: Music of Britten and Purcell. It’s beautiful and mysterious music, highly recommended.

Really looking forward to this book. Ecklund is an excellent scholar and writer, and this is a critically understudied topic.

Current listening: Hudson, with Jack DeJohnette, John Scofield, & Brad Mehldau Larry Grenadier (whom I’m seeing live on Sunday at the Dakota!).

Ted Gioia’s albums-of-the-year lists are always long and excellent. This year’s list is no exception. There are hours of beautiful, exciting music here.

Camus, quoted by Izzo:

The love we share with a city is often a secret love.

Current listening: Mavis Staples, One True Vine:

I can tell when something’s going on, And something’s going on. But some Holy Ghost keeps me hanging on…

A pleasant surprise after a looooong weekend of grading. Reading and writing: I’m easy to please.

The three little Octonauts. Enjoying this Halloween—undoubtedly the last one they’ll choose complementary costumes.

The three little Octonauts.

October in Minnesota.

I love these three brave explorers.

This girl takes her sleep very seriously. #hermothersdaughter

New arrival!

On wrath, contemptuous smugness, and slower thinking: Alan Jacobs interviewed by Emma Green for the Atlantic.

Beautiful mist on the lake this morning.

Big leaf pile, beautiful day

The wonderful Andrew O’Hagen on literature vs. “the dark babble of social media."

The London Review of Books has a new podcast up, on Auden. It’s excellent. Supplement with Alan Jacobs on “The Public Poetry of W. H. Auden”.

Current listening: two albums from London’s jazz scene: Nubya Garcia’s Nubya’s Five (check out her cover of “Contemplation”); Alfa Mist’s Antiphon.

If forced to pick the greatest song of all time, I might choose “I Want You Back”. That bass line…

Turns out things are pretty much the same, except wetter, and Siri works better.

Captain Abemerica. Saving the world, and stopping to smell all the flowers.

So glad to be present at a very full @AnselmHouseUMN for a talk by Dan Siedell on modern art.

Current listening: Tyshawn Sorey’s Verisimilitude, a beguiling fusion of jazz & classical (a fusion that’s incredibly fertile at the moment).

“You are the Product." John Lanchester, brilliant as always, in the London Review on why Facebook is terrifying.

D is for dreary.

Stunning: “The Majestic Marble Quarries of Northern Italy”, h/t Prufrock News.

Sandbar, with canoe. Cross Lake, MN.

“The Economics of the Protestant Reformation”. (I love when academic research like this is freely accessible, btw. One of the most frustrating things about my discipline, literary studies, is how dependent the discipline is upon noxious gatekeepers like JSTOR.)

Current listening: “Lazarus”, from Bowie’s late, great Blackstar.

Current listening: Matthew Shipp, I’ve Been to Many Places. I especially like his version of “Summertime.”

Success! Finished uploading old WP posts to my new Jekyll-based site. Next adventure: a custom domain?

J.M. Coetzee’s early poetry was written in binary, hex, & FORTRAN, anticipating the digital-humanities turn by decades.

On my commutes, I’ve been listening to Tony Judt’s Postwar. It’s a remarkable book, & I will write more later—but for now, I just wanted to say I have only 19 hours left in this 43 hour long behemoth!

Digging moss with Nana.

Current listening: my local symphony orchestra’s recordings of Beethoven’s symphonies.

Two of the great moral philosophers of recent history are Bernard Williams and Alaisdair MacIntyre. This essay does an admirable job articulating the differences between the two thinkers—the former a pessimistic and skeptical classical liberal, the latter a pessimistic Catholic traditionalist.

Joshua Cohen is the guest on this week’s episode of Bookworm, discussing his new novel, Moving Kings. It’s an incredible conversation about what sounds like a superb book—do check both out.

Spending a big chunk of the afternoon trying to set up my personal site and microblog with Jekyll & GitHub Pages. As always, it’s far more complicated than expected—but also very enjoyable, deep work.

Polos. Bed head. Ready for their first day of business school.

This post, on the rift between the White House & the State Department on Qatar, confirms that foreign policy is turning out to be the most terrifying part of a terrifying presidency.

Current listening: Sun Ra, Monorails and Satellites, vol. 1. Inspired by the remarkable NYT Magazine portrait of Craig Taborn published Sunday.

Current listening: Jobim’s Stone Flower, a melancholy masterpiece of the late Jobim.

Current listening: Max Richter, from Sleep. Beautiful music, composed about, and for, sleep.

These two rascals let themselves out of their beds, and their bedroom, this morning at 6:25. We’re doomed.

Tyler Cowen’s interview with Jill Lepore is, like all his conversations, fascinating and wide-ranging.

This one is particularly recommended for its focus on writing, on the ways we understand and interpret history, and on time-travel.

Lucky enough to catch the second set of the Chris Potter Quartet at the Dakota last night. Incredible show—I’d highly recommend his most recent albums.

If you are in the habit of kissing your kids' owies to help them feel better, you better also prepare yourself for the day when they bite their tongues while chewing soggy Cheerios. #YouReapWhatYouSow

Abraham #bossinrainboots

At last… sprinkler season.

Bravest explorers.

Wandering and river-watching on a dreary Good Friday.

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you will return.

Fire sunset #nofilter

More birthday festivities: morning at the zoo. Sam was rapt—he could have watched the giraffes for hours.

Two years old today… Their day included 3/4 grandparents, a singing Elmo birthday card (thanks @monnytam!) tons of cake (thanks @deborahkaul!), a giant cardboard box, puddle splashing, and Chuck E. Cheese. So, an amazing day for two amazing boys.

Exciting news: Jeffrey Stout will give a series of Gifford Lectures this May 1-11. Entitled “Religion Unbound: Ideals and Powers from Cicero to King,” the lectures will “trace the ideal [of ethical religion]‘s history and explain how its defenders have defined and criticized religion.” Follow the lectures (they’ll stream live) on the Gifford Lectures site.

#theboys

The road less traveled.

I’m very proud to have helped edit one of the essays that became this book, Reaping Something New: African American Transformations of Victorian Literature, while I was managing editor of Victorian Studies. The essay, “Wild Charges: The Afro-Haitian ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’,” was among my favorite of the many, many critical essays I read in the course of my graduate studies.

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Krista Tippett’s conversation with Anil Dash is a classic—one of my On Being all-time favorites.

The indignity of Minnesota winter: when you drop a glove & then, upon stopping to pick it up, kick it full of snow.

Commiseration & consolation for Minneapolis in winter.

Observing New Year’s Day at the Conservatory. (And zoo.)

The boys, loving Chicka Chicka Boom Boom (a gift to their big sister on the day of their birth, from uncle @andrewkaul and aunt @baileekaul)

Found my favorite bar in NYC.

The most beautiful morning for a walk.

#BWCA #latergram #nofilter

Mission accomplished. #tcbookfestival

Clifford Day!

Home.

The giant playground wasn’t quite exciting enough.

Puddles.

Morning at the zoo!

A beautiful night for soccer.

¡Feliz cumplé, Carmen, y adios, arepa!

Climbing trees at the Farmers Market.

Abe is just shocked that the gorilla is letting the elephant loose on the world.

#ReadingTime

The boys love their chocolate banana dessert.

We’ve found heaven on earth for the kids.

First visit to @functionbrewing! Delighted to finally be here, several years after it opened! cc @andrewkaul @rossbruggink

BFFs. Cc @joelniese @meaganniese @kdkaul

Road trip!

Calm.

The boys are serious about their graham crackers. #latergram

Belated birthday celebration. Lil was pretty excited about singing—and the boys were just concerned about getting some cake.

Dinner with friends … Lots of friends.

Easter egg hunt! Lil just ran around, a little too terrified of the other kids to pick up any eggs.

Waiting for the bus.

Beautiful day for a @hellopizza_mn picnic!

Spring! At last! The boys, it turns out, are pretty interested in this thing we call the outdoors.

Spent a lot of time today photographing trees. #treesofinstagram

Long walk, blue sky, lake country.

Painting time!

Well, two out of three enjoyed the walk this afternoon. Abe, however, was a bit cranky.

Window shopping. (One of the dishes at this place is awesomely named “The Prime Rib of Miss Jean Brodie.")

Many of Osip Mandelstam’s own poems only exist today because they were memorized by his wife & friends before they were burned.

Happy birthday, Abe & Sam!

Giant snow octopus. Only in New Brighton.

Breakfast for the boys: all of grandpa’s eggs.

Sunrise, New Brighton style

Robot!

Sammy: so happy; so confused by glass.

Birthday!!! Thanks for the great par-tay @monnytam @fargofd @deborahkaul @andrewkaul @ryanleedawes @baileekaul @kristacostin @smmoothies @kdkaul

Thanks for the Amazon gift card, @monnytam & @fargofd – it was put to good use. 📕📗📘📙

Time for a quick early morning snooze.

Sick day with Nana D.

Malingering.

Snow + Angel

Weekend project with Pa Kaul, finished!

Christmas with the Kauls.

#TreesofSilverwood

#TreesofSilverwood

Evening walk with the boys.

I’ve seen a lot in these last nine months. But nothing quite so gag-inducing as what the boys did to this poor bowl of Life cereal.

Sammy, really excited for bedtime.

The office today.

Fun day with Auntie @kristacostin, Grandpa @fargofd, @monnytam, @ryanleedawes, and @karincostin!

Cozy moment this morning.

Sammy, pretty proud after pulling himself up for the first time.

Evening walk #nohatsnocoatsnovember

Someone’s kids haven’t quite adjusted to daylight savings yet. On the plus side, they’re a great help in my new plan to wake up earlier.

Lil, worried she would scare people because she looked so much like a real lion, decided to reassure them by telling them she was a tiger.

I’d describe her style as Van Gogh with a bit of Turner.

Morning menu planning.

Lil exploring the lake with Nana D.

Successful day at the #twincitiesbookfestival

Someone started crawling today! Evidence captured by auntie @karincostin

Apple picking, pumpkin patching, and CHICKENS!

Full boys = happy boys.

Morning play time.

Rise and shine!

#freshhoney

Another early morning–the boys didn’t want to miss the loons. Instead, they woke the loons up.

First morning at the lake. It’s an early one.

#bedhead

New chalk is all meticulously lined up. Thanks @kristinvarella!

Fun at @monnytam’s cc @fargofd

Sam & Grandpa

Abe & Nana D

Well, at least one of them thinks I’m funny.

karincostin #twinspics

MiniMessi

At least one of them’s in a good mood today!

The boys are 3 months. That means soon I won’t be able to put them on the kitchen table unrestrained anymore.

Jason Moran + Robert Glasper, at the Walker. Absolutely amazing.

Happy birthday, boys!

Beautiful day on campus.

Thanks for the visit, @kristinvarella! (Also, Lilli’s pretty pumped about her sweet new shades.)

Weekend with the nephew. He’s the smiliest kid ever.

#twins

Lil loving her new bicycle. Thanks @karincostin for the sweeeeet helmet!

After taking care of the boys all night, the grandparents still seem to love them.

Two weeks old.

Sleeping in on a Friday.

Abraham Andrew and Samuel Ryan, soaking up some sun at 4 days old. Enjoy it while it lasts, boys.

Party time, with pickle.

Surprise spaghetti night with “nampa Kim”!

Mesmerized by hopping animals. #Walker75

Nightly reading to Curious George in the laundry basket.

Christmas reading with uncle @andrewkaul and auntie @baileekaul h/t on Once Upon an Alphabet: @brainpicker

Costin Christmas

Beautiful morning. #latergram

The moment I’ve been waiting for. #windinthewillows

Snow snow snow!

Halloween!

I love you most of all, my darling, When autumn leaves start to fall.

Afternoon at the lake. #latergram

Piano with grandpa

In a corn hole world, horseshoes doesn’t stand a chance.

A moment with Schiller on my ride into work this morning.

Blankets! With uncle @andrewkaul

Scoping out the lake.

Costin family photo day @karincostin @kristacostin @ryanleedawes @fargofd

Somebody smudged the mirror @askovfinlayson… @andrewkaul

Beautiful walk with the little one around the lake tonight.

Probably should have emptied the pool after it rained…

Her father’s daughter.

Still Lil with flowers.

#ComoPark

Smelling the summer flowers

The scratcher! With @ryanleedawes, @fargofd, @andrewkaul, @baileekaul

HI! Lilli’s new favorite word.

Like father, like daughter.

Someone really enjoyed her dinner this evening.

A page straight out of @kristinvarella’s cookbook!

This game is dum.

Great gift, @kristacostin!

Opening her first Christmas gift with aunt @karincostin (#book)

On a one-day drive across both Montana and North Dakota, everyone needs to pitch in! #latergram

First day of Christmas skiing.

Morning walk to work.

Sleeping in.

Vancouver. I could get used to this place.

Naptime

Playtime

Trying to start crawling and standing on the same day.

Napping at daycare

#onlyinbloomington

Labor Day picnic at Bryan Park

Air balloons, / the summer evening: / both quickly gone

The fried butter put Lilli straight to sleep. #INstatefair

Wild times with buddy Billy!

Still life with soccer ball, cook books, and baby.

Lazy Sunday afternoon

I love the new toy, it’s delicious! Thanks aunt @karincostin!

Sitting is so much fun!!!!!

Sourdough. Heirloom tomato. Bacon. Cheddar. Avacado. #masterchef

Applesauce!!!!

#indy #pipeorganbuilders?

#indy

Smile time with gramps.

Trying so hard to crawl.

Dancing with gramps! So much fun!

New jumper!

First bites of food! Everybody’s favorite: oat cereal.

Reading time.

The next Messi.

Swing + foot = contemplation

Bath time!

“My dad totally rocks!” ~Lil’s onesie

Someone’s looking forward to lunch.

Somebody learned how to roll over today!

Life is good.

Alley view of the Bloomington square.

Farmers' Market

Standing is so much fun.

Bed time.

Hummingbird!

Serious Liffrig discussion, post-wedding. #kaulwedding

With the lovely couple #kaulwedding

Oh boy. #kaulwedding

Wedding dance whaaaa??? #kaulwedding

Wedding dance whaaaa??? #kaulwedding

Pre-wedding bath!

karincostin no kidding!

With Grandpa Arlen

Catnap.

Today, suddenly, toys are fascinating.

Go, dog. Go!

Now naptime.

Playtime!

#30thbday @kristinvarella

#30thbday

#30thbday

Sleeping in.

Lilli’s first trip to the east coast… And mine! #providence NYC is next, @jnetsamyn!

“My carseat is awesome!!!!”

Reading time with pa.

Time for a walk with ma!

Inaugurated into the classic Gpa Kent evening snooze tradition. With @fargofd

andrewkaul feeding Lil

With @ryanleedawes, @kristacostin, @andrewkaul, Gma Tammy & Gpa @fargofd. And taken by @kristinvarella.

With @meaganniese and @hendersweet

With @andrewkaul, @ryanleedawes, and @kristacostin

Lilli’s Easter Sunday baptism!

Time for breakfast!

Suspicious of uncle @andrewkaul

Meeting uncle @andrewkaul

Ready to meet uncle @andrewkaul!

Two months!

Right after the big grin, of course!

Lovin' life!

Loving' the bath!

Boss dad

Someone got a sexy new haircut! Ye-yeah!

Quiet Lilli

Lilli in Grandma’s cocoon. So cozy.

Snoozing in the laundry pile.

4 weeks today!

Chillin' in the chair.

ryanleedawes has new buttons!

Reaching for the stars with aunt @kristacostin.

Everyone’s favorite sleeping position: arm suspended mid-air.

Nap time, again. Lazy kid.

Three weeks old. And loved by auntie @karincostin! (And her other aunties too!)

Meeting Grandpa!

“Grandma loves me”

Tammy’s birthday!

Sunroom

With my girls.

She’s already got attitude.

Pizza with the reles!

SuperBowl par-tay!

Flannel fort.

With Aunt @kristacostin.

Sunday best.

Squirmy.

Nap time.

Sunday morning laziness.

Friends. Amazing.

Happiest mama on the block.

Cozy Moby

Chillin' to Bill Evans with dad, for whom side-lying is an incredible revelation.

With aunt @kristacostin for some amazing lunch from @kristinvarella

USA-Canada last night. Lilli’s first soccer match put us both to sleep. Her more quickly than me.

Home from my doctors appointment and doing well!

Home sweet home (2:45 am version, w/tornado warning & no sleep)

Home sweet home

Kristin

First car ride

The happy family

This one’s for you, Aunt Ems #riskyflash

Sleeping beauties

Death grip on the finger

With the old man