Unwise

Of course it was

It was on this day in 1892 that the Pledge of Allegiance was recited en masse for the first time, by more than 2 million students. It had been written just a month earlier by a Baptist minister named Francis Bellamy…

https://open.substack.com/pub/thewritersalmanac/p/the-writers-almanac-from-saturday-82c?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios

Mary Oliver's canine pedagogy

 The Poetry Teacher

The university gave me a new, elegant
classroom to teach in. Only one thing,
they said. You can't bring your dog.
It's in my contract, I said. (I had
made sure of that.)

We bargained and I moved to an old
classroom in an old building. Propped
the door open. Kept a bowl of water
in the room. I could hear Ben among
other voices barking, howling in the
distance. Then they would all arrive —
Ben, his pals, maybe an unknown dog
or two, all of them thirsty and happy.
They drank, they flung themselves down
among the students. The students loved
it. They all wrote thirsty, happy poems.

https://voetica.com/poem/5712

Enterprise

Gene Roddenberry, the Star Trek cast and NASA administrators attended the rollout ceremony for the aptly named Space Shuttle Enterprise. 🖖🚀

https://www.threads.net/@roddenberryofficial/post/DABvyaGoPph/?xmt=AQGz53LUvM56968kDqz34zHQOsBncSSxbFkUW_x5G5EVeQ

If you build it…

The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball.

🇺🇸 has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, & erased again. But baseball has marked the time.

Legend. RIP James Earl Jones.

https://www.threads.net/@ben_verlander/post/C_trb85ygou/?xmt=AQGzAsWgVF7ItbNLSmDWlRXnKE4BoswG5_5UgbVbMChQEA

What Albert knew

I first heard this from deejay philosopher Chris in the Morning on Northern Exposure, c.1990.

"Strange is our situation here upon earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose ... There is one thing we do know: that man is here for the sake of other men ... upon whose well-being our own happiness depends." - Albert Einstein

https://www.threads.net/@alberteinstein/post/C_soOPsRGj1/?xmt=AQGzC6HwLudP8ct-vMpld3vt3UL6zK43qSldqmUWDtBI8Q

If I’d seen this when I was a kid…

Astronaut plays baseball by himself in space ⚾️

https://www.threads.net/@ikluqa/post/C_mr7NRRhLK/?xmt=AQGzTYk2G7FTXXWTVlP2X1Cw7ETJjZJNI_qRAZB1_5SJWA

Mary's dog Percy

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C_i8fTgSnWk/?igsh=dHBlajF0eHp2MnM4

A perfect novel

John Williams's masterpiece Stoner (1965) "is something rarer than a great novel—it is a perfect novel, so well told and beautifully written, so deeply moving, that it takes your breath away," wrote Morris Dickstein in The New York Times. But Williams, born 102 years ago on this day, wasn't limited to the campus setting of his best-known work, exploring the dark side of the Old West in Butcher's Crossing (1960) and the Roman Empire in Augustus (1972).

hiddengems

https://www.threads.net/@libraryofamerica/post/C_QcJK3uwlC/?xmt=AQGzMoUeBW0sNzRlmlEZt29Mng02kCpbdAjyaiXjhW_kAQ

Shohei’s 🐕

Shohei Ohtani's dog, Decoy, threw the first pitch tonight 🐶

https://www.threads.net/@dodgers360/post/C_PJkttvQA7/?xmt=AQGzamUmAknZMLV6OmmZbdYJoRefFPnPer0dEfPbnH6PzA