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 📚:
Current reading 📚:
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. 🎶
Shirley Hazzard’s Greene on Capri recounts the relationship that Hazzard and her husband, the Flaubert scholar and translator Francis Steegmuller, had with Graham Greene over two decades, from the late 60s to the late 80s. Their friendship started when, in a Capri cafe, Hazzard overhead Greene struggling to remember a line from a minor Robert Browning poem. Hazzard, who seems to have most of the English literary canon memorized, walked up to him, reminded him of the line, and walked away.
The Churchgoer I stayed up late to finish The Churchgoer, a new novel written by Patrick Coleman. It’s San Diego noir about mega-churches, faith and doubt, and about learning to accept love from others, despite unshakeable belief that you don’t want or deserve it. It’s so good. The voice is brilliant from start to finish. The narrator and central character is a former youth pastor turned atheist. His theological training gives him exegetical and etymological habits that won’t die, though his faith has; they’re a source of brilliant and fresh metaphor.
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! 📚 🎶