"The Longing of the Feet"

At first the crawling

child makes his whole body
a foot.

One day, dazed
as if by memory,
he pulls himself up,

discovering, suddenly,
that the feet
are for carrying

hands. He is so
happy he cannot stop
taking the hands

from room to room,
learning the names
of everything he wants.

This lasts for many years
until the feet,
no longer fast enough,

lie forgotten, say,
in the office
under a desk. Above them

the rest of the body,
where the child
has come to live,

is sending its voice
hundreds of miles
through a machine.

Left to themselves
over and over,
the feet sleep,

awakening
one day
beyond the dead

conversation of the mind
and the hands.
Mute in their shoes,

your shoes
and mine,
they wait,

longing only to stand
the body
and take it

into its low,
mysterious flight
along the earth.

--"The Longing of the Feet" by Wesley McNair, from The Town of No. © David R. Godine, 2010. Reprinted with permission.

WA

Vital information

Here's a better media diet to begin the day with. Bill McKibben said we're the age of missing information, but it's out there just waiting for us to pay attention.

Post by @cbssundaymorning

View on Threads

A 🐕’s life

If I Were a Dog

by Richard Shelton

I would trot down this road sniffing
on one side and then the other
peeing a little here and there
wherever I felt the urge
having a good time what the hell
saving some because it's a long road

but since I'm not a dog
I walk straight down the road
trying to get home before dark

…

sometimes in the afternoon we could
go to the park and she would throw
a stick I would bring it back to her

each time I put the stick at her feet
I would say this is my heart
and she would say I will make it fly
but you must bring it back to me
I would always bring it back to her
and to no other if I were a dog

"If I Were a Dog" by Richard Shelton, from The Last Person to Hear Your Voice. © University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007. Reprinted with permission.

https://open.substack.com/pub/thewritersalmanac/p/the-writers-almanac-for-thursday?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios

Evolution, beneath the radar

It was on this day in 1858 that joint papers about the theory of evolution, written by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, were presented to the Linnean Society of London.

Wallace was only 25 at the time that the papers were read, and Darwin was 49. Darwin had begun formulating his theories about natural selection about 20 years earlier, but he was a slow, methodical worker, and he thought that since no one else had the same ideas, he might as well take his time. 

Young Alfred Russel Wallace, on the other hand, had no such hesitations. He'd done his fieldwork in Malaysia and Indonesia, studying animals there, based in good part on geology. He came up separately with the idea of natural selection as the mechanism of evolution. When Darwin found out about it, he was shocked, so he rushed to get his ideas into print.

The truth is that neither man dreamed up his theory of evolution out of nowhere. For many years, scientists had known that evolution existed — that species were created and became extinct over time. The problem was, they didn't know why.

Neither Darwin nor Wallace was present to read his own paper on this day in 1858. Wallace was still in Malaysia, and Darwin was mourning the death of his young son Charles. The meeting itself was long and boring, with an announcement of donations and gifts to the society, then a new member of the council was elected, and a long tribute was delivered in memory of a member who had recently died. Then the presentation of papers began, first an excerpt from Darwin's On the Origin of Species, then a letter from Darwin, then Wallace's paper, "On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type." After that, there were five more papers presented — other topics included "The Vegetation of Angola" and "Hanburia, a new genus of Cucurbitaceae." The meeting took several hours, and most of the gentlemen who heard the papers were so lethargic from all the information thrown their way that they didn't realize that anything out of the ordinary had happened. So even though this is the day that one of the most revolutionary ideas in science was delivered to the public, it barely made a wave.

Darwin's On the Origin of Species was published a year later.

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

The Moving Finger writes;

and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit

Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

--Omar Khayyám, quoted on BBC4's Free Thinking podcast.

the chance of failure… beginning with

Baseball

by John Updike

It looks easy from a distance,
easy and lazy, even,
until you stand up to the plate
and see the fastball sailing inside,
an inch from your chin,
or circle in the outfield
straining to get a bead
on a small black dot
a city block or more high,
a dark star that could fall
on your head like a leaden meteor.

The grass, the dirt, the deadly hops
between your feet and overeager glove:
football can be learned,
and basketball finessed, but
there is no hiding from baseball
the fact that some are chosen
and some are not—those whose mitts
feel too left-handed,
who are scared at third base
of the pulled line drive,
and at first base are scared
of the shortstop's wild throw
that stretches you out like a gutted deer.

There is nowhere to hide when the ball's
spotlight swivels your way,
and the chatter around you falls still,
and the mothers on the sidelines,
your own among them, hold their breaths,
and you whiff on a terrible pitch
or in the infield achieve
something with the ball so
ridiculous you blush for years.
It's easy to do. Baseball was
invented in America, where beneath
the good cheer and sly jazz the chance
of failure is everybody's right,
beginning with baseball.

"Baseball" by John Updike, from Endpoint. © Knopf, 2009. Reprinted with permission."Baseball" by John Updike, from Endpoint. © Knopf, 2009. Reprinted with permissionhttps://open.substack.com/pub/thewritersalmanac/p/the-writers-almanac-from-tuesday-998?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios

Natural Magic:

Emily Dickinson, Charles Darwin, and the Dawn of Modern Science Enjoyed this new exploration of surprisingly common ground between Darwin's science and Dickinson's poetry...

The 10th Good Thing About Rascal

…In Ms. Viorst's book, the 10th good thing about Barney is the way he becomes a part of the earth and so helps the flowers to grow. That's an immortality beyond debate.

The 10th good thing about Rascal was his daily testimony of unconditional love. In his every waking, bouncing moment, in his every grateful, unguarded nap in my lap, he reminded me that love is always worth the price of heartbreak. And that's a kind of immortality too.

Margaret Renkl 
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/24/opinion/grief-pets-dogs.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Willie, Mickey, and the Duke

Willie Mays has died, just as they prepare to play an MLB game at his starting place: Birmingham's Rickwood Field.

They used to play his song (and Mickey's and the Duke's) before the Nashville Sounds home games at old Greer Stadium. 🎜"Now it's the '80's..." 🎝 

How time marches on. 

Monty Python’s Best Philosophy Sketches

"The Philosophers' Football Match," "Philosopher's Drinking Song" & More

https://www.threads.net/@openculture/post/C8QnSUVJvCV/?xmt=AQGzlQFsebk7jvtZBEqLPRQdxo6M0dgXGc36oqWElK7KZQ