So You Think You Know About Grateful Sand and Graceful Trees?

Twitter Has Become A Playground For Poets

“Amid the trolls and politicians blasting out 140-character broadsides, poets and their readers have embraced Twitter as a vehicle for higher language. The premium Twitter places on brevity and emotional honesty is uniquely well-suited for an artform that so prizes not just candor and exhortation, but verbal economy.”

Ms. Bagnulo said there were two major questions to consider when deciding where to open a bookstore: Which city neighborhoods are in need of one, and which can support one. 

“It’s sort of joking, but the rule of thumb is, if the neighborhood can support a farmers market, the neighborhood can support a bookstore,” she said.

Jessica Bagnulo is one of the owners of two bookstores in Brooklyn, New York. They sold 500 books in their opening weekend

Almanac of sand and bohemian picnics with Lydia and Chris et al ...: Dorothy Parker on writing for the Al fresco movies

“Hollywood money isn’t money. It’s congealed snow, melts in your hand, and there you are.” Dorothy Parker, interviewed by Marion Capron (Paris Review, Summer 1956) ... read more

 What does a £15,000 whisky taste like?

 New machine treats tendinitis, foot pain without surgery or anesthesia.

...the oak of Howell fame has always been admired for its staying power…. No other tree is so self-possessed, so evidently at one with the world. Unlike the beech, horse chestnut or sycamore, whose branches reach up towards the sky, the solid, craggy trunk of a mature oak spreads out, as if with open arms, to create a vast hemisphere of thick, clotted leaves 

• Language of Cold Rivers, sand, trees and kidneys

Thank you Will Schwalbe: “Reading books remains one of the best ways to engage with the world, become a better person and understand life’s questions, big and small…Books are uniquely suited to helping us change our relationship to the rhythms and habits of daily life in this world of endless connectivity

“How much do you need to forget in order to continue your everyday life? How much can you remember without dying from it?" The Israeli writer David Grossman finds answers... Existentialism 

Marco Santagana, Dante: The Story of His Life.

Melancholy, by László F. Földényi.

Oldest Living Yoga Celebrity Tells All

Jack Townsend, Mens Rea Element of False Claims Crime, Includes links to discussions of wilfulness requirements as they apply here

Peter Reilly, Foreclosure Cash For Keys Not Taxable As Service Income. “…given the low stakes and the weakness of the IRS position, this really feels like everything was on autopilot from the point at which Greentree decided they needed to issue a separate 1099 for the ‘cash for keys’.”

Choose To Be Grateful. It Will Make You Happier – Arthur Brooks, New York Times November 22, 2015.

“Beyond rotten circumstances, some people are just naturally more grateful than others. A 2014 article in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience identified a variation in a gene (CD38) associated with gratitude. Some people simply have a heightened genetic tendency to experience, in the researchers’ words, “global relationship satisfaction, perceived partner responsiveness and positive emotions (particularly love).” That is, those relentlessly positive people you know who seem grateful all the time may simply be mutants…”

… Revisiting Ron Hansen’s “Mariette in Ecstasy” 25 Years Later

Good Catholic storytelling has always been corporal: messy, strange, steeped in the sins of real people. I’m not talking about church thrift-store fare, devotional tales with covers of sunrises over mountains. Consider the profane piety of the whiskey priest in Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory. The lust of Obadiah Elihue Parker in Flannery O’Connor’s “Parker’s Back.” The scarred and scorned bodies searching for grace in the novels of Toni Morrison. Catholics go for crucifixes over crosses. They want their Mass wine in a chalice, not Solo cups. The Eucharist is not a symbol; it is substance

The Powerful Lawyer Who Negotiates Cold River Deals For Artistic Expression

“Unknown to those outside Hollywood, the lawyer Nina L. Shaw is a secret weapon, a behind-the-scenes power player adept at striking deals that cultivate freedom of voice, especially for black members of the creative class whose mission it is to be artist and advocate.”

Ten years after: Allen Drury and our changing concept of shame

From 2006: Can you seriously imagine a senator, or any other public figure, commiting suicide under similar circumstances today? In fact, let’s take it one step further: can you think of anysecret so shameful ... read more