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Cahokia Jazz

Loved the audiobook of Francis Spufford’s amazing novel, read by Andy Ingalls. It’s a great listen, and Ingalls is an excellent reader. But I recommend also getting a print copy for the great maps, family trees, etc. (Check your library!) Dynamite as a pair.

cover image of Cahokia Jazz, a novel by Francis Spufford
Bag it
Auto-generated description: A crumpled brown paper bag with the text 10 Duro Dubl Life 100% Recycled Paper printed on it.
I am a huge fan of the lunch-size brown paper bag. (And not merely because of its contents, though they often also are worthy of praise.)
Two years
My mom died September 1, 2022: 4 months and 4 days shy of her 99th birthday.
I think of her and Dad all the time. The best is when they're in my dreams.
Color photo of an old woman with white hair and an active expression
The Finder Found | Edwin Muir

Will you, sometime, who have sought so long, and seek

Still in the slowly darkening searching-ground,

Catch sight some ordinary month or week

Of that rare prize you hardly thought you sought—

The gatherer gathered and the finder found,

The buyer who would buy all himself well bought—

And perch in pride in the buyer’s hand, at home,

And there, the prize, in freedom rest and roam?

More Mysterious

“By never trusting, cynics never lose. They also never win. Refusing to trust anyone is like playing poker by folding every hand before it begins….

The cynical voice … claims that we already know everything about people. But humanity is far more beautiful and complex than a cynic imagines, the future far more mysterious than they know.”

Jamil Zaki

Shadows on the pitch: Aston Villa vs Stinkpots

Players and their shadows  on a green football pitch near sunset

(Odegaard, #5, appears to be wiping the pitch — literally — with an unfortunate Villa player. Right-click to open a bigger image in a new tab, then embiggen.) BTW, the Stinkies won. 🙁

The Leheriya Gate at the City Palace, Jaipur, India
Golden doors surrounded by ornate green plasterwork in an Indian style

Image: Wikimedia/Jakub Hałun, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Preach, Jaroslav
>Tradition is a good thing. It is traditionalism that is bad. Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. Tradition lives in conversation with the past, while remembering where we are and when we are and that it is we who have to decide. > >—Jaroslav Pelikan

(h/t blog.angloromanticism.org - btw, my new band name)