Month: March 2012

• March 14, 2012

  On Pinterest folk

  In the Start-up section of the March 11, 2012 issue of The New York Times, I glanced at an article devoted to Pinterest. The headline runs: “Pinterest Aims at the Collector Hidden Inside All of Us.” According to its website, Pinterest is a “virtual pinboard,” a place where you can grab and pin up photos, images, color swatches–hence,…
• March 13, 2012

  On kith and kin

  As it happens, [Flaubert’s] “Un Coeur Simple” is a magisterial example of…how it is possible to enter into, and convey to others, a mental world that is not one’s own…. –Anthony Daniels, “Flaubert’s Simple Heart,” New Criterion (June 1, 2010) *   *   * My grandpa liked to take my hand in his large,…
• March 12, 2012

  ‘There is more beauty than our eyes can bear…’

  I love the prairie! So often I have seen the dawn come and the light flood over the land and everything turn radiant at once, that word “good” so profoundly affirmed in my soul that I am amazed I should be allowed to witness such a thing. There may have been a more wonderful first…
• March 10, 2012

  On the value of paying attention: An excerpt from Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead

  The following is an excerpt from Marilynne Robinson’s novel Gilead (New York: FSG, 2004), pp. 28-9. The narrator, Reverend John Ames, is 76-years-old and dying. As his final word, he has decided to write a letter to his 7-year-old son. The year is 1956. In the excerpt below, he refers to Feuerbach, a prominent atheist living during…
• March 9, 2012

  ‘The fingers on the face reside on the face’: A short dramatic performance

  This week, one conversation partner put a copy of Bruce Mau’s “An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth” into my hands. The “Manifesto” contains 43 design statements. My eyes came to rest on no. 39: Coffee breaks, cab rides, green rooms. Real growth often happens outside of where we intend it to, in the interstitial spaces–what Dr. Seuss…