During those last weeks of the Bishop's life he thought very little about death; it was the Past he was leaving. The future would take care of itself. But he had an intellectual curiosity about dying; about the changes that took place in a man's beliefs and scale of values. More and more life seemed to him an experience of the Ego, in no sense the Ego itself. This conviction, he believed, was something apart from his religious life; it was an enlightenment that came to him as a man, a human creature. And he noticed that he judged conduct differently now; his own and that of others. The mistakes of his life seemed unimportant; accidents that had occurred en route, like the shipwreck in Galveston harbour, or the runaway in which he was hurt when he was first on his way to New Mexico in search of his Bishopric.
-Willa Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop
On April 25, 1915, the Anzacs landed on the Gallipoli Peninsula and carved a special place in our history ... A time to remember ...
Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: Dear Oprah
Dear Oprah Winfrey,
We writers want to say thank you ...
More than 150 authors including 4 Pulitzer Prize winners, 17 National Book Award finalists and winners; 3 MacArthur recipients; and 36 Guggenheim and 18 NEA fellows, as well as winners of American Book Awards, Southern Book Critics Circle Awards, PEN/Malamud and Whiting Prizes, an Orange Prize and a Newbery Medal have signed an open letter today to Oprah Winfrey, asking her to re-instate her book club.
• Word of Mouth [via MJ Rose ; I used to have a beer or three with Bill at the Iceberg: Jason Benjamin - Bill Hunter gets a kiss from the packing room ]
• · Eddie is funny and honest and likes to help, but the sunniness of his character is shot through with small slivers of irony and pessimism. He has a sharp eye for life's small print - the ominous bits which alert you to the fact that you're not getting the bargain you may have been led to expect. Eddie finds himself with just $3 left ; The more I have tried to make sense of Kuhn's words and deeds, the more I have come to regard him as an intellectual coward who benefitted from his elite institutional status in what remains the world's dominant society. Kuhn vs. Popper
• · · There's a Hemingway-esque terseness to present tense, a "just the facts, ma'am" minimalism that hasn't time to get beneath the surface. Interview: George Soros is the author of eight books, including The Bubble of American Supremacy: Correcting the Misuse of American Power; An Amazing Breakthrough: Scholars Decode Sophocles, Euripides... ; Toby Clements grits his teeth and finds inspiration in a bestseller A Da Vinci Code Parody (On Publishing)
• · · · Amitai Etzioni Notes Do Libraries Still Matter? ;
• · · · · This week the poetry world is atwitter over the closing down of an Internet site that for the last year dedicated itself to exposing what it calls fraud among the small circle of poetry contests that frequently offer publishing contracts as prizes. Surrender in the Battle of Poetry Web Sites ; Foetry: American Poetry Watchdog
• · · · · · When he was driving taxis to earn a buck, Bondi director Tony Krawitz seemed like a luftmensch. Now, the 37-year-old looks more like a macher who gives his family nachas.* Making waves from Bondi to Cannes ; Minima Maxima Sunt Breathtaking images of ocean's oxygen engines