Sunday, July 25, 2021

Moravian Adam Ondra: The Man Who Saved The Slovenian Language

 So many of us believe in perfection, which ruins everything else, because the perfection is not only the enemy of the good; it's also the enemy of the realistic, the possible, and the fun." 

-Rebecca Solnit


Andrej Imrich: Na Mariánskej hore sa začala púť, zaznela aj kritika na zatvorenie kostolov


Pope's visit to Slovakia a miracle, says church analyst


Carpenters Like Jozef Imrich Senior Would Help to Use Medieval Techniques To Help Rebuild Notre-Dame’s Roof

A group of about 30 young workers and students will gather at Catholic University in DC next month and use hand tools to build a 45'x35' wooden truss, which will be used in the Paris cathedral's reconstruction following the 2019 fire. - The Art Newspaper


A fantastic interactive feature from the NY Times on Adam Ondra, the world's best rock climber.


It was morning in Australia. Having just flown in on the red-eye from Los Angeles, I checked into my hotel in Sydney and turned on the television to catch up on the overnight news. It was close to the top of the eight o’clock hour, prime time on breakfast TV, and a young reporter was standing on a street in Adelaide talking into the camera with an anguished look on her face. “SCHOOL LOCKDOWN” read the strap at the bottom of the screen, in the bold capital letters that have come to signify major breaking news.

77 shootings within a mile of home: why our family left America After eight years in New York, it was time to resettle our family in Australia. Why? Let me count the reasons. ( via A & BC)


       In The Guardian several critics introduce the foreign "writers who are making waves", in Going places: The international authors to read this summer


IS THERE ANYTHING IT CAN’T DO? Coffee won’t upset your heartbeat, and might even calm it. “In fact, results indicate that every additional cup of coffee a person drinks daily might lower their risk of arrhythmia by about 3% on average, according to the study published July 19 in JAMA Internal Medicine.”



Wall Street Journal op-ed:  God’s Jigsaw Puzzle Needs Every Piece, by Mike Kerrigan (Hunton Andrews Kurth, Charlotte, NC):


Here was my epiphany: Life is a jigsaw puzzle, and I’m looking at its pieces entirely wrong.

Not just any jigsaw puzzle, either. One our creator loved so much he entered into it incarnate, briefly surrendering to the finiteness of his own creation to redeem it. He who alone sees the whole picture adores it that much.

Such love suggests there are no dispensable persons—his puzzle pieces—in his creation. A background piece is no less essential than one completing Mona Lisa’s smile, for a gap anywhere destroys integrity everywhere.


We Need Literature To Tell Untold Stories. But When Is It Appropriation?

How can writers tell and translate stories about marginalized groups without exploitation or appropriation? - Metropolitan (Japan)


The Man Who Saved The Slovenian Language

Over six centuries in the Habsburg empire and most of another in Yugoslavia, the tongue of this tiny Alpine land might well have faded away. But one dedicated (or obsessive) 18th-century priest/author/publisher led the effort to mold a bunch of hillbilly dialects into a serious language. - Atlas Obscura


"If nothing slows their momentum, Amazon will control nearly 80% of the consumer book market by the end of 2025. Every single book lover should worry."




Water Stone Words’

This short movie evokes the rich heritage of humankind's creative responses to the natural environment over millennia. The creators of "water stone words"...