Love the world
The most curious phenomenon in all Venetian history is the vitality of religion in private life, and its deadness in public policy. Amidst the enthusiasm, chivalry, or fanaticism of the other states of Europe, Venice stands, from first to last, like a masked statue; her coldness impenetrable, her exertion only aroused by the touch of a secret spring. That spring was her commercial interest, — this the one motive of all her important political acts, or enduring national animosities. She could forgive insults to her honor, but never rivalship in her commerce.
Urban legend
Pente has spent his entire life in a one-block radius. In a world where many of us are transient, often crisscrossing the country to follow work or loved ones with our childhood homes a distant memory, this is awe-inspiring.
Independence. interdependence. & repeat.
Any place that tries to internally re-create the experience of the street, to substitute an inside for an outside, will fail because it is exactly th[e] between-ness of the street that makes it necessary.
Unfittest
The Church has been horrifyingly corrupt in previous eras and still survived. It’s been led by ecclesiastics who make Bernard Law’s hands look clean, and still survived. It’s faced fiercer enemies than Richard Dawkins and still survived. Time after time, Chesterton wrote, ‘the Faith has to all appearance gone to the dogs.’ Each time, ‘it was the dog that died.’ But if the Church isn’t finished, period, it can still be finished for certain people, in certain contexts, in certain times. And so it is in this case: for millions in Europe and America, Catholicism is probably permanently associated with sexual scandal, rather than the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Ross Douthat, in a little piece for this month’s Atlantic’s ‘Ideas’ feature.
Renewal
“The garbage was in a locked can,” she said. “But he didn’t seem to have any trouble getting the lid off. You can see the marks where the claws went right through.” For at least 20 minutes, while Ferguson and her two grandchildren watched and snapped pictures from inside the house, the bear pulled plastic bags from the can, snacked on whatever he found appealing, then dragged the last bag into the woods.
The Sun runs two prominent articles today about wildlife in gradual urban/suburban recovery — species well up the food chain with slender population toe-holds in the Baltimore area. Black bears on the front page, peregrine falcons on page two.
Translation
“I’m not at all interested in plundering Buffalo, but the truth of the matter is that otherwise, St. Gerard’s is not going to survive.”
Upstream
The object you hold in your hands must be a pleasure to hold and read — or what good is a printed journal?
Disentanglement
[M]y taste in music has grown steadily more radical, my politics the reverse. I believe this is largely a coincidence, though I still wonder if something lies behind it. As a Nader-for-President volunteer in the mid ’90s I was invested primarily in the bebop and postbop tradition, commonly grouped under the heading “mainstream jazz.” Today that is still my home, although I’ve come to understand and love sounds that are far more extreme, that even some jazz players wouldn’t consider music. In part, I hear this work as refreshingly apart from the hypercapitalist, commoditized, fluff-obsessed world around it.