Scrolling through my photos, and I like these of the Three-Legged Buddha at Storm King Art Center in New York.

đź“š Finished reading: Life Sciences, by Joy Sorman, translated by Lara Vergnaud. I’m interested in the way she uses the rhythm of the sentence to approximate the desperate desire to be rid of the pain. In narrating Ninon’s story, the sentences run on, and sometimes on and on. It’s not quite stream of consciousness, but the movement from idea to idea does approximate the brain’s desperate search for a way out of the pain. That’s an interesting metaphor: Is pain something we are in and that we need to get out of? Or is pain something in us that we need to get out of us? (See Elaine Scarry’s, The Body In Pain) Is it both at the same time?

Stairway to Heaven is one of those songs that I think I’ve heard enough times to last a lifetime. This version, however, got to me.

More on Fear and Trembling: When Abraham presumes to drag Isaac along, he presumes to become as God to Isaac. He gives God, from his son’s perspective, a human, a man’s, face. That’s an act of fear, not of faith, and it’s also a quintessential patriarchal moment.

From notes I made to Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling more than 30 years ago: The problem with Kierkegaard’s analysis, and all those who say Abraham passed God’s test, is they seem to assume that because Issac is Abraham’s son, he is Abraham’s to do with as he pleases.

Now that I’ve stepped down from my union position, readjusting to teaching a full load is proving, shall we say, interesting. I’m not complaining. It’s just a different kind of work, with a whole different rhythm. But so far I’m grateful to be back in the classroom.

‘The Jew is the devil’ — Neo-Nazis rally in Florida - The Jerusalem Post

Apparently, they chanted, “Jews rape children and drink their blood." The blood libel lives on.

I wonder if anyone would recognize me?

They are best buddies at my mother’s dog rescue, Wilma’s Orphans, and I so wish I could take both of them, but I can’t even take one of them. I don’t have a dog-friendly lifestyle right now.

From a summer 2020 night walk in our garden: flowers in the lamp light near the building next to ours.

America’s Parents Express Overwhelming Support for Teachers, Their Unions and Public Education

In the 1990s, I had a side business doing freelance business-to-business corporate communications. I was successful enough that I considered building the business to the point where I could leave academia. Very different circumstances, but I think about that a lot these days.

‘Maus’ Holocaust Novel Removed From Classrooms by School Board - The New York Times

‪And now the campus internet is down to boot. Perfect way to end the first week‬ of classes.

I have my one remote class to teach today and the website that I need for the lesson seems to be down. I hope they get it fixed before class time, but now I need to plan a contingency. What a lovely way to start the semester!

Short of physical exclusion, there is no surer way to tell someone they don’t belong than to surround them with silence about their own existence.

The most useful advice I was ever given about writing conclusions is that they should answer the question So what? The problem? Sometimes you think you’re writing towards a clear idea of what the So what? is only to watch helplessly as it undoes itself right in front of you.

I don’t remember where I was when I took this picture, but I was surprised to learn that the Independent Order of Odd Fellows is a real organization with a long and apparently distinguished history.

Boy did I have a lot of hair in 9th grade! And that’s me, not more than ten years later.

From “The Inertia of Anxiety,” by Shuri Kido, tr by Tomoyuki Endo and Forrest Gander

“Being lonely” was imaginable enough,
but calling it “despair”
simplified it too much.
I was fighting against this simplification.

In @AGNIMagazine.

“When it comes to language, all writers want to be billionaires. All long to possess so many words that using them is a fat charity. To be utterly free in language, to be absolute commander of what you do not own—that is the greatest desire of any writer.”

—James Wood

I’d rather be here than writing syllabi.

Taking a break from writing a syllabus. These are from Storm King, a place where I find peace:

Dog in the Night, by Pamela Painter, in Michigan Quarterly Review:

“In every story’s evening and every novel’s night there is only the one bark, by one dog, alone in the night. Tell me: where is this dog that barks in the night?”

It’s a prose poem and it’s a fun read.