Dog energy

https://substack.com/@lizadonnelly/note/c-46039494?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action

Virginia Wolf: “we are the thing itself”

https://www.threads.net/@mariapopova/post/C1TA6Jex4Pq/

“My Year of Being Very Online About Dogs”

My friend Daryl's friend and former colleague at W.Carolina, on dogs and the culture wars. What a strange world, dogs' AND ours…

Dogs are where we project our "fantasies about what we want — either who we want to be or what we want the world to look like," said Katharine Mershon, a professor of religion and philosophy at Western Carolina University who studies the role of dogs in American society.

Dr. Mershon told me how dogs had become a focal point for tensions in her rural Appalachian town: Her local NextDoor was filled with arguments about whether leaving hunting dogs to roam about freely, slightly underfed and living mostly outside, constituted abuse. This was an argument, ostensibly about dogs, that was actually about gentrification and the place of newcomers to impose their values on local life.

At points in my conversations with Dr. Gabrielsen and Dr. Mershon, we discussed the poet, philosopher and animal trainer Vicki Hearne. "Dogs are domesticated to, and into, us," Ms. Hearne wrote in her 1986 book "Adam's Task." "And we are domesticated to, and into, them."

…

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/20/opinion/dogs-culture-wars.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
My Year of Being Very Online About Dogs

Remembering Carl Sagan

"Science is a way to call the bluff of those who only pretend to knowledge… It can tell us when we're being lied to. It provides a mid-course correction to our mistakes."

Remembering Carl Sagan, who left us on this day in 1996: https://www.themarginalian.org/2015/11/09/carl-sagan-science-democracy/

https://www.threads.net/@mariapopova/post/C1Fxd0gxeNB/

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TED ‘23

https://www.threads.net/@ted/post/C0jrvUCMlXZ/

Lear, humanist

https://www.threads.net/@americanhumanist/post/C0hasHkga0a/

Norman Lear

101!

https://www.threads.net/@cbssundaymorning/post/C0jlOB7MPf-/

Office upgrade

https://www.threads.net/@dapperdondharshi/post/C0VBoIYLISw/

Trump in a nutshell

 Delightful.

A British writer penned the best description of Donald Trump I’ve ever read:

“Why do some British people not like Donald Trump?”

A few things spring to mind. Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem. For instance, he has no class, no charm, no… pic.twitter.com/VuECZeSmnA

— CALL TO ACTIVISM (@CalltoActivism) November 28, 2023

A British writer penned the best description of Donald Trump I’ve ever read: “Why do some British people not like Donald Trump?” A few things spring to mind. Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem. For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace – all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed. So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief. Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing – not once, ever. I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility – for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman. But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is – his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty. Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers. And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults – he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness. There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It’s all surface. Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront. Well, we don’t. We see it as having no inner world, no soul. And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist. Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that. He’s not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat. He’s more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege. And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully. That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead. There are unspoken rules to this stuff – the Queensberry rules of basic decency – and he breaks them all. He punches downwards – which a gentleman should, would, could never do – and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless – and he kicks them when they are down. So the fact that a significant minority – perhaps a third – of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think ‘Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy’ is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that: • Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and mostly are. • You don’t need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man. This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss. After all, it’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum. God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid. He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart. In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws – he would make a Trump. And a remorseful Doctor Frankenstein would clutch out big clumpfuls of hair and scream in anguish: ‘My God… what… have… I… created?' If being a twat was a TV show, Trump would be the boxed set.” -Nate White

Counting the days

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"Now put the dog on"

https://www.instagram.com/p/CzOWRl9szcU/?igshid=MTc4MmM1YmI2Ng==

Life After “Calvin and Hobbes”

The semi-reclusive cartoonist who said "the days are just packed" (and "treasure" is all around us if we just know where to look) ended his enchanting strip after just a decade— unlike his hero Charles Schulz, who drew Charlie Brown 'til he died. 

Did Bill Watterson "grow up"? And does growing up have to be seen as "always a loss"? Questions we're about to address in class  with Susan Neiman's "Why Grow Up…" She insists that maturity is enlightenment, if we just know how to approach it.

Anyway, it's always a pleasure to revisit that little boy and his more mature sidekick, who could care less if people called them "a pair of pathetic peripatetics" and who understood the importance of embracing change in all the seasons of life.

"Growing up is always a loss—a loss of an enchanted way of seeing, at the very least—and for some people growing up is more of a loss than for others. Perhaps part of what drove Watterson, "Ahab-like" by his own telling, back to the drawing board with his boy and his tiger day after day was a subconscious commitment to staying a child. Maybe he chose to stop publishing because, in some way, for whatever reasons, he became O.K. with growing up."

Life After "Calvin and Hobbes"
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/10/30/the-mysteries-bill-watterson-book-review

Little free libraries make me happy

A weirdocracy

...if we can keep it.

  

“So we agree that the whole government can be shut down by a consensus of Congress’s ten biggest weirdos?”

(Thanks, Ed)

So help me Carl (& Ann)

https://www.instagram.com/p/CxucDP9Ol4w/?igshid=MTc4MmM1YmI2Ng==

Question the ethiiics...

Goes for football too...

https://www.instagram.com/p/CxlHPphusZM/?igshid=MTc4MmM1YmI2Ng==

Ask people questions

https://www.threads.net/@cosmicmuse/post/CxlKlxqrsi6/?igshid=MTc4MmM1YmI2Ng==

“Why waste the last years of your life feeling bad?”

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CxUW5ozMx2q/?igshid=MTc4MmM1YmI2Ng==

Happy as a dog

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CvrrUW0pImy/?igshid=MTc4MmM1YmI2Ng==

Why I love baseball

Sometimes it IS something you can't put into words, at least not words comprehensible to non-fans: a breathtaking catch, an elegant double play, a career-ending milestone... Sometimes it's the delightful spirit of uselessness the poet Wm Carlos Wms expressed: "The crowd at the ball game/is moved uniformly/
by a spirit of uselessness/which delights them--" etc. But mostly for me I think it's just the way it connects my 66 year-old self with the 6-year old who cheered for the '64 Cards in the WS against the Yanks, and with my dad, and my daughters...

@whywelovebaseball50: https://www.instagram.com/p/CxQasxzMdaa/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igshid=ZGUzMzM3NWJiOQ==

Visualization of the speed of light

Space-time is really big.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CwsVWaEtQP0/?igshid=MTc4MmM1YmI2Ng==

They never quite believe it

https://www.instagram.com/p/CwTqrPSuzyi/?igshid=MTc4MmM1YmI2Ng==

Even 4,000 Steps a Day Can Have Big Health Benefits

But the more you walk, the better off you’ll be.

...That translates into a 30- to 45-minute walk, or roughly two miles, although it varies from person to person, said Dr. Seth Shay Martin, a cardiologist at Johns Hopkins Medicine and an author of the study. But the more steps you take, the better off you are: Mortality risk decreased by 15 percent with every additional 1,000 steps participants took.

“It’s the best medicine we can recommend: Just going out for a walk,” said Dr. Randal Thomas, a preventive cardiology specialist at the Mayo Clinic who was not involved with the study...

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/09/well/move/steps-walking-health-benefits.html?smid=em-share

Fighting for the Right to Ramble & Roam

"…while walking is often a solitary activity, this version made it feel like part of something large and powerful, connected to a whole world of people who would fight for the land."

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/26/magazine/right-to-roam-england.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
The Fight for the Right to Trespass

Best books on writing

https://www.threads.net/t/Cu7w_72LgS-/?igshid=MTc4MmM1YmI2Ng==

“He’s in London”

https://www.threads.net/t/CuywNFloIas/?igshid=MTc4MmM1YmI2Ng==

HDT’s bday

It's the birthday of Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau in Concord, Massachusetts (1817). He went to Harvard, but he didn't like it very much, nor did he enjoy his later job as a schoolteacher. He seemed destined for a career in his father's pencil factory, and in fact, he came up with a better way to bind graphite and clay, which saved his father money. But in 1844, Thoreau's friend Ralph Waldo Emerson bought land on the shore of Walden Pond, a 61-acre pond, surrounded by woods, and Thoreau decided to build a cabin there. It was only two miles from the village of Concord, and he had frequent visitors. During the two years he lived there, Thoreau kept a journal that he later published as Walden, or Life in the Woods (1854). In the conclusion to Walden, Thoreau wrote, "I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours."

https://open.substack.com/pub/thewritersalmanac/p/twa-from-wednesday-july-12-2017?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post

Biking Nashville

I've done that... without bananas. We do have a nice greenway/bikeway system in Nashville.

Not everyone loves Jy 4

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Lose the cat

https://www.instagram.com/p/Ct9vTZZvJmG/?igshid=MTc4MmM1YmI2Ng==

Phil.Oliver@mtsu.edu

👣Solvitur ambulando

💭Sapere aude

Never really apart

We hung out a lot in the Hundred Acre Wood back in the '90s...

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Dave's walks

Walk better

"Feel the peal"

'I'm not just faster, but taller': how I learned to walk properly – and changed my pace, posture and perspective

"…walking can be enough. It can complement other forms of exercise, such as yoga and pilates, but if you don't do anything else, improving your walk can still confer major health benefits…"

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/jun/19/im-not-just-faster-but-taller-how-i-learned-to-walk-properly-and-changed-my-pace-posture-and-perspective?CMP=share_btn_link

The Art of Being a Flâneur: finding joy in the moment

Sometimes the best way to explore a city on foot is to simply wander, with no goal in mind other than to follow the sound of church bells, or drift across a leafy square.

...This sort of aimless strolling is conducive to savoring, to finding joy in the moment, a practice that some social scientists have found can be cultivated and may help lead to a more fulfilling life. In “Savoring: A New Model of Positive Experience,” the scholars Fred B. Bryant and Joseph Veroff describe savoring not as mere pleasure, but as an active process that requires presence and mindfulness. It’s “a search for the delectable, delicious, almost gustatory delights of the moment,” as they put it...
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/19/travel/walking-travel-cities.html?smid=em-share

Underdogs

With Everything Going Wrong, the Cardinals Still See Opportunity

St. Louis, a perennial playoff contender, is having its worst season in decades, forcing it into an unfamiliar position: underdogs.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/18/sports/baseball/oliver-marmol-cardinals.html?smid=em-share

Ian McEwan

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/live:bbc_radio_fourfm?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile

Unreplaceable you

Oliver Sacks
https://www.instagram.com/p/CtiKSufs-Bv/?igshid=NjZiM2M3MzIxNA==

Our real work, our real journey

https://www.instagram.com/p/CtSob8Upen3/?igshid=NjZiM2M3MzIxNA==

Bogey takes your call

 "You take your worries to the park and leave 'em there" -- My old answering machine message...

Carl Sagan on books

They "break the shackles of time"...

https://youtu.be/-5nkpkg_sL8

Ataraxia cubed

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cst1T-5vUvl/?igshid=NjZiM2M3MzIxNA==

Bourbon

In Signposts in a Strange Land by Walker Percy:

 

...And there WAS light

I make this God/Dad joke just about every time I find my students sitting in the dark. It always feels empowering.

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https://www.instagram.com/p/Cs6OGo8OSu5/?igshid=NjZiM2M3MzIxNA==

Moving on

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Greer Stadium

Good times here. Fond memories.

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Dr. Hanks

Actor Tom Hanks has told graduates from Harvard University in the US that "truth is sacred" and urged them to fight to defend it.

The two-time Oscar winner was the main speaker at the prestigious institution's commencement ceremony for students completing degrees.

He received an honorary arts degree himself.

"The truth to some is no longer empirical," he told an audience of more than 9,000 people.

"It's no longer based on data nor common sense, nor even common decency."

Telling the truth is no longer the benchmark for public service, he said.

"Truth is now considered malleable, by opinion, by zero sum end games."

Hanks also told the graduates they had a choice to be one of "one of three types of Americans, those who embrace liberty and freedom for all, those who won't, or those who are indifferent".

But he said that the responsibility to uphold the truth belonged to everyone.

"The effort is optional. But the truth, the truth is sacred. Unalterable. Chiselled into the stone and the foundation of our republic."

The 66-year-old's speech was not without its lighter moments as he joked about his lack of academic credentials.

"I don't know much about Latin, I have no real passion for enzymes and public global policy is something I scan in the newspaper just before I do the Wordle," he said, referring to the popular web-based game.

Hanks asked graduates not to be "embittered" by the fact he was receiving a degree "without having done a lick of work, without having spent any time in class, without once walking into that library".

But he made a "damn good living playing someone who did", he added, referring to the fictional Harvard professor Robert Langdon, whom he played in the films The Da Vinci Code, Angels & Demons and Inferno.

"It's the way of the world, kids," he said as his audience laughed.

Hanks, who was one of six people to receive honorary degrees on Thursday, was also given a Harvard volleyball in reference to one of his best-known roles in the film Cast Away.

bbc

If I can't bring my dog...

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