Opening it one night in my house, an ordinance survey map of Connemara made little sense to Martin. Mostly, it was what was isn't in it that he had an eye for. Refolding it, he handed it back to me saying, "What chance have we when that's where we think we live."
-John Moriarty, A Hut at the Edge of the Village
It’s a George Gershwin, Frederick Douglass, Mark Twain, Estevan Ochoa, Saul Bellow, Elon Musk, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Duke Ellington, Aaron Copland, Ulysses S. Grant, Cochise, Ted Williams, Dorothy Parker, Rod Serling, Jimmy Stewart, Carl Sandburg, and Wyatt Earp sort of place . . .
-Michael Wade, from here
.....................................our planet is not only alive but it is doing what it has always done.
The house gives signs of enjoying the emptiness. It is rearranging itself after the night, clearing its pipes and cracking its joints. This dignified and seasoned creature, with its coppery veins and wooden feet nestled in a bed of clay, has endured much: balls bounced against its garden flanks, doors slammed in rage, headstands attempted along its corridors, the weight and sighs of electrical equipment and the probings of inexperienced plumbers into its innards. A family of four shelters in it, joined by a colony of ants around the foundations and, in spring time, by broods of robins in the chimney stack. It also lends a shoulder to a frail (or just indolent) sweet-pea which leans against the garden wall, indulging the peripatetic courtship of a circle of bees.
The house has grown into a knowledgeable witness.
-Alain de Botton, The Architecture of Happiness
Our elders tell us, "Don't judge a book by its cover." Though well-intentioned advice, it doesn't entirely reflect the primitive parts of our brains that have had to make snap judgments for thousands of years to survive and thrive in our habitats. We're hardwired to judge things by their covers because, in previous eras of lions, wolves, and marauding tribes, that's how our ancestors stayed alive.
As evolved as we might seem today, this split-second context scanning and decision-making process never left us. It's still a core part of our environmental awareness and innate survival system. While we're not conscious of it, we prefer the world around us to be stable and predictable because it gives us a sense of control over our environment. But deep down, we know stability isn't always possible. So no matter where we are, we're constantly on the lookout for contextual clues and the slightest changes in our environment.
-Kevin Ervin Kelly, Irreplaceable: How to Create Extraordinary Places That Bring People Together
...........................at Sippican Cottage:
So, we were presented with a common design dilemma. A Victorian house is laid out differently than a more recent pile of sticks and bricks. The rooms are too big, or too small, or not where you expect them. Bathrooms are always in short supply, although a Victorian bathroom in good repair is a wonderful thing. They invented bathrooms, after all. They pretty much got it right on the first go-round. Everything was white, for cleanliness. Toilet, sink, tub, lots of white tile, with interesting patterns on the mosaic floors.
A Victorian house with two bathrooms was a rarity. For instance there used to be a pecking order of poshness for Boston Irish, which I am, sorta. They knew a thing or two about Victorian houses, and pecking orders. They had to mop the floors in them at first, and eventually they lived in them when the structures were run down enough to afford the rent. The bottom rung of the Boston Irish social climbing ladder was ignant bogtrotter. Then came shanty Irish. If you rose further in the world, you could become cut-glass Irish, also known as lace-curtain Irish. Middle class. The pinnacle, of course, was two-toilet Irish.
.....................I grew up in a home like this.
Apparently people are starting to notice that it makes a difference. For instance, this book review, or this column review. For a different take, check this blog post. All I know is I do feel privileged.
That Veronica and I were given keys and told to come early on a frozen Saturday in April to open the school for the Our Town auditions was proof of our dull reliability. The play's director, Mr. Martin, was my grandmother's friend and State Farm agent. That's how I was wrangled in, through my grandmother, and Veronica was wrangled because we did pretty much everything together. Citizens of New Hampshire could not get enough of Our Town. We felt about the play the way other Americans felt about the Constitution or the "Star-Spangled Banner." It spoke to us, made us feel special and seen. Mr. Martin predicted a large turnout for the auditions, which explained why he need use of the school gym for the day. The community theatre production had nothing to do with our high school, but seeing as how Mr. Martin was also the principal's insurance agent and very likely his friend, the request was granted. Ours was that kind of town.
-Ann Patchett, Tom Lake
Some people become depressed at the scale of the universe, because it makes them feel insignificant. Other people are relieved to feel insignificant, which is even worse. But in any case, these are mistakes. Feeling insignificant because the universe is large has exactly the same logic as feeling insignificant for not being a cow. Or a herd of cows. The universe is not there to overwhelm us; it is our home, and our resource. The bigger the better.
-David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World
Some philosophers merely argue their philosophies. When they finish their disputation, they hang up the tools of their trade, go home, and indulge in the well-earned pleasure of private life. Other philosophers live their philosophies. They treat as useless any philosophy that does not determine the manner in which they spend their days, and they consider pointless any part of life that has no philosophy in it. They never go home.
Spinoza belonged unambiguously to the latter group.
-Matthew Stewart, Courtier and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in the Modern World
 |
| early bloomers |
 |
| We love our peonies |
 |
| A few alliums |
 |
| Rhododendrens My favorite plant |
 |
| These azaleas have been around for a while |
 |
| My Sweetie has the touch |
 |
| Next week this will be magnificent |
 |
| some begonias just hanging around |
...................there is something wrong with "rootedness:"
We struggle now to update our ideas of home and place for a new unbounded era, naturally wishing to shed outdated notions of stasis and rootedness.
-Maggie Jackson, Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age
Globalization is starting to take shape around the globe in a whole new form. Reshoring of manufacturing was beginning before COVID but was accelerated by it. According to the capital managers at BlackRock, the last 30 years of globalization are being proven a mistake. Fears of overseas turmoil creating domestic economic turmoil makes U.S. production reshoring a national imperative. More and more this mantra will be true: If you want to sell in the U.S., you must make it in the U.S.
...........paragraphs I've read this month:
Impressment arose in part because the age of exploration created a demand for labor at sea that could not be met through normal financial incentives. But it also arose because of changes on land. The shift from late feudalism to early agrarian capitalism, the great disruption that would fuel the growth of the metropolitan centers in the coming centuries, had disgorged a whole class of society—small, commons-based cottage laborers—and turned them into itinerant free agents. By the late 1500s, the explosion of vagabonds made them public enemy number one, triggering one of the first true moral panics of the post-Gutenberg era. Everywhere there were wanderers, whole families lost in the changing economic landscape. Serfs once grounded in a coherent, if oppressive, feudal system found themselves flotsam on the twisting stream of early capitalism. To everyone sitting on the banks above that stream, the change must have seemed something like the modern fantasies of zombie invasions: you wake up one day and realize that the streets are filled with people who not only lack homes, but also suffer from some other, more existential form of homelessness—not even knowing what kind of home they should be seeking.
-Steven Johnson, Enemy of All Mankind: A True Story of Piracy, Power, and History's First Global Manhunt
Posts
All Comments
