Tag: Art

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

The inevitable end to the shutdown / MTV in the 1980s / Is it time for Cat. 6 hurricanes? / The $2,000 tariff dividend idea / The golden age of Costco / Cormac McCarthy shares his inner self

This week: The inevitable end to the shutdown / MTV in the 1980s / Is it time for Cat. 6 hurricanes? / The $2,000 tariff dividend idea / The golden age of Costco / Cormac McCarthy shares his inner self

Most of these items come from my social media networks. Follow me on BlueSky, Instagram, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and Facebook for more fascinating videos, photos, articles, essays, and criticism. Learn more about my academic background here and about me here.

1. Hurricanes: Do we need a new ‘Category 6’?
Sky News | October 2025
“There are five levels on what is called the Saffir-Simpson scale. But with storms getting stronger, should another category be added to it?”
Also see, from The New Yorker: The Hidden Devastation of Hurricanes

2. Beyond the Apocalypse
By Amitav Ghosh | Equator | October 2025
“How visions of catastrophe shape the ‘climate solutions’ imposed by aid agencies.”

3. What to know about Trump’s plan to give Americans a $2,000 tariff dividend
By Paul Wiseman | Associated Press | November 2025
“Budget experts scoffed at the idea, which conjured memories of the Trump administration’s short-lived plan for DOGE dividend checks financed by billionaire Elon Musk’s federal budget cuts.”

4. Inside the CIA’s secret mission to sabotage Afghanistan’s opium
By Warren P. Strobel | The Washington Post | November 2025
“In a decade-long covert operation, the U.S. spy agency dropped modified poppy seeds in an attempt to degrade the potency of Afghanistan’s billion-dollar opium crop.”

5. Why the Democrats Finally Folded
By Russell Berman and Jonathan Lemire | The Atlantic | November 2025
“This is how the government shutdown was always going to end.”

6. Sneaky viruses can hide in your body and bounce back even if you’re cured
By Gabrielle Emanuel | NPR | October 2025
“Often the human hosts have no idea. They’d fallen ill, then appeared to beat the virus. Their blood tested negative. They show no symptoms.”

7. What the Fascist Tech Bros Get Wrong About Prometheus
By James Folta | LitHub | October 2025
“Why a statue of this Greek myth? Prometheus is often seen as the patron saint of innovative risk, but there are some parts of the myth that the tech bros are overlooking.”

8. The Wayback Machine’s snapshots of news homepages plummet after a ‘breakdown’ in archiving projects
By Andrew Deck and Hanaa’ Tameez | Nieman Lab | October 2025
“Between May and October 2025, homepage snapshots fell by 87% across 100 news publications.”

9. Couldn’t Care Less
The Santa Fe Institute | December 2017
“Cormac McCarthy in conversation with David Krakauer … reflects on isolation, mathematics, character, and the nature of the unconscious.”

10. A Baleful Legacy
By David A. Bell | The New York Review of Books | November 2025
“Enlightenment writers who proposed ways of improving and even perfecting the human species laid the theoretical foundations of modern racism.”

11. What killed Napoleon’s army? Scientists find clues in DNA from fallen soldiers’ teeth
By Ari Daniel | NPR | October 2025
“In October, Napoleon called his soldiers back after barely engaging the Russian army. It wasn’t a defeat, but it was no win either. And during the march home, winter arrived early.”

12. ‘MTV Was a Lot Like Kabul’
By Tom Freston | New York Magazine | October 2025
“Tequila girls. Coke-dealing staffers. Office fires. In its ‘80s heyday, the network was a wild place with few rules.”

13. Could the internet go offline? Inside the fragile system holding the modern world together
By Aisha Down | The Guardian | October 2025
“Behind every meme and message is creaking, decades-old infrastructure. Internet experts can think of scenarios that could bring it all crashing down …”

14. Still ‘Crazy’ for Patsy Cline
By Holley Snaith | American Heritage | Fall 2025
“Since her untimely death in 1963, the legendary country music star — and the first female to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame — continues to inspire new audiences and artists.”

15. A Trip to Mars? They’re Ready to Go.
By Alex Vadukul | The New York Times | October 2025
“Fans of the red planet joined scientists at an annual conference sponsored by the Mars Society. One attendee said he would take a ‘one-way ticket’ “

16. Can the Golden Age of Costco Last?
By Molly Fischer | The New Yorker | October 2025
“With its standout deals and generous employment practices, the warehouse chain became a feel-good American institution. In a fraught time, it can be hard to remain beloved.”

17. Walking is good for you. Walking backward can add to the benefits
By Stephen Wade | Associated Press | October 2025
“Backward walking, also known as retro walking or reverse walking, could add variety and value to an exercise routine, when done safely. Turning around not only provides a change of view, but also puts different demands on your body.”

18. The Perfect Crime
American Experience :: PBS | April 2018
“When Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, two well-educated college students from a wealthy suburb of Chicago, confessed to the brutal murder of 14-year-old Bobby Franks, the story made headlines across the country. The unlikely killers not only admitted their guilt, but also bragged that they had committed the crime simply for the thrill of it.”

19. The Breakfast Club: Smells Like Teen Realness
By David Kamp | The Criterion Collection | January 2018
“This was John Hughes s great gift in his early films as a screenwriter and director: he understood the whirling, emotionally inconsistent state of being an American teenager better than anyone else working his beat in the 1980s.”

20. Lorca
By Melvyn Bragg | In Our Time :: BBC 4 | 2011-2019
Also see: The Minoan Civilisation | Cogito Ergo Sum | The Bhagavad Gita | The Age of the Universe

Interested in more like this? Since June 2011, Stillness of Heart‘s “Recommended” series has accumulated a magnificent collection of articles, essays, music, podcasts, historical analyses, cultural reflections, and documentaries. Scroll through the offerings here.

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

Herculaneum’s lost library / Gen Z-ers and conservative Christianity / These dinosaurs are your friends / Discover the usefulness of coffee naps / Being organized may suggest longer life / 1816: the ‘Year Without a Summer’

This week: Herculaneum’s lost library / Gen Z-ers and conservative Christianity / These dinosaurs are your friends / Discover the usefulness of coffee naps / Being organized may suggest longer life / 1816: the ‘Year Without a Summer’

Most of these items come from my social media networks. Follow me on BlueSky, Instagram, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and Facebook for more fascinating videos, photos, articles, essays, and criticism. Learn more about my academic background here and about me here.

1. The Beacon of Democracy Goes Dark
By Anne Applebaum | The Atlantic | October 2025
“For nearly 250 years, America promoted freedom and equality abroad, even when it failed to live up to those ideals itself. Not anymore.”

2. ‘Deeply alarmed’: House Democrats send a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth
By Mariel Padilla | The 19th | October 2025
“Women veterans in Congress and nearly 100 House Democrats are decrying the secretary’s comments about women in the military.”

3. Get Ready to See Yourself in Ads
By John Herrman | Intelligencer :: New York Magazine | October 2025
“Thanks to generative AI, the future may look like Minority Report.”

4. We’re finally reading the secrets of Herculaneum’s lost library
By Hayley Bennett | New Scientist | October 2025
“A whole library’s worth of papyri owned by Julius Caesar’s father-in-law were turned to charcoal by the eruption of Vesuvius. Nearly 2000 years later, we can at last read these lost treasures.”

5. Can We Bury Enough Wood to Slow Climate Change?
By Syris Valentine | Scientific American | October 2025
“Wood vaulting, a simple, low-tech approach to storing carbon, has the potential to remove 12 billion tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every year — and some companies are already trying it.”

6. Why So Many Gen Z-ers Are Drawn to Conservative Christianity
By Daniel K. Williams | The New York Times | October 2025
“In the aftermath of Covid — and amid the longing for purpose, community and transcendence that many Gen Z-ers feel — a sizable minority of them have found their answer in conservative Christianity, fueling both a religious and a political revival among these young Americans. They bring a new attitude to the combination of faith and politics, and many see politics as a matter of spiritual warfare.”

7. Plato and the Poets
By Elaine Scarry | The Boston Review | Summer 2025
“The centuries-old debate should be settled: an intellectual world bereft of poetry is a damaged one.”

8. ‘Broadcasting’ has its roots in agriculture. Here’s how it made its way into media
By Rachel Treisman | NPR | October 2025
“Various dictionaries have traced the verb’s first written use — to sow seed over a broad area — to 1733 and 1744.”

9. Leapin’ lizards! These guys are good for the garden
By Malachi Leo | Garden Style San Antonio | October 2025
“Tiny dinosaurs have set up shop in your yard. Don’t worry, they’re harmless — unless you’re an insect.”

10. Coffee naps might be the weirdest — and smartest — way to recharge
By Leah Worthington | National Geographic | September 2025
“It sounds backward, but research suggests a cup of coffee followed by a short nap could sharpen focus and fight fatigue.”

11. Jean-Jacques Dessalines: Reassessing the Haitian revolutionary leader’s legacy
By Julia Gaffield | The Conversation | October 2025
“One of the founding fathers in the struggle for Haitian independence, alongside Toussaint Louverture, Dessalines has a mixed legacy: celebrated at home for his role in ending slavery and overthrowing French colonial rule, but often condemned internationally for his violent tactics and the 1804 killing of white French people in independent Haiti.”

12. Deep-diving manta rays are retrieving directions from nature’s Google Maps
By Bronwyn Thompson | New Atlas | October 2025
“The researchers believe the mantas are using nature’s cues such as changes in magnetic field strength, oxygen concentration, temperature and light to navigate themselves onto the right path for the next days’ travel.”

13. The new Dr. Google is in. Here’s how to use it.
By Leana S. Wen | The Washington Post | October 2025
“Yes, artificial intelligence can help patients with their health, when used with caution.”

14. Victory in the Pacific
American Experience | May 2005
“The two-hour program examines the final year of World War II in the Pacific, including the rationale for using the atomic bomb, and features the first-hand recollections of both American and Japanese civilians and soldiers — even a kamikaze pilot who survived his failed mission.”

15. The Real Problem Is How Trump Can Legally Use the Military
By Jeannie Suk Gersen | The New Yorker | October 2025
“Congress wrote statutes with the apparent assumption that whoever held the office of the Presidency would use the powers they granted in good faith.”

16. Chile’s Route 7: A tough, lonely drive to the end of the world
By Egle Gerulaityte | BBC News | October 2025
“Chile’s Carretera Austral remains one of the world’s most remote and spectacular road trips, where every kilometre tests your resolve and rewards your persistence.”

17. How to use tech in the garden and still keep your serenity
By Jessica Diamond | Associated Press | September 2025
“Gardening tools are evolving to incorporate technology — including artificial intelligence — to help us keep plants healthier, avoid unpleasant tasks and even grow crops indoors over winter. And we can use them without losing the stress-relieving, analog benefits that nature provides.”

18. Being organised and active may be predictor of longer life, study finds
By Amelia Hill | The Guardian | September 2025
“Researchers find specific self-descriptions predict mortality risks better than broader categories such as extraversion”

19. The Big Chill: Surviving
By Harlan Jacobson | The Criterion Collection | August 2014
“Though it represents Kasdan s tackling larger, more personal themes, The Big Chill may be about nothing more or less than how to survive a weekend with friends who knew one another for a short period long ago on someone else s money and who have since abandoned one another s lives and younger values faster than the U.S. military evacuated Saigon.”
Also see: These Are Your Parents

20. Frederick Douglass
By Melvyn Bragg | In Our Time :: BBC 4 | 2016-2020
Also see: The Bronze Age Collapse | Sovereignty | 1816, the Year Without a Summer | The 12th Century Renaissance

Interested in more like this? Since June 2011, Stillness of Heart‘s “Recommended” series has accumulated a magnificent collection of articles, essays, music, podcasts, historical analyses, cultural reflections, and documentaries. Scroll through the offerings here.

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

The joy of walking alone / NPR loses Susan Stamberg / The Pentagon press corps revolts / New levels of ICE-y aggression / Refreshing the iPhone / The Amazon’s ‘flying rivers’ / The beauty of Euclid’s ‘Elements’

This week: The joy of walking alone / NPR loses Susan Stamberg / The Pentagon press corps revolts / New levels of ICE-y aggression / Refreshing the iPhone / The Amazon’s ‘flying rivers’ / The beauty of Euclid’s ‘Elements’

Most of these items come from my social media networks. Follow me on BlueSky, Instagram, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and Facebook for more fascinating videos, photos, articles, essays, and criticism. Learn more about my academic background here and about me here.

1. Iran is out in the cold as the Mideast unites in support of the Gaza ceasefire
By Jon Gambrell | Associated Press | October 2025
“How Tehran’s theocracy responds in the weeks and months ahead, whether that means lashing out or trying to rebuild its hobbled economy at home, will be crucial.”
Also see: This is why the story of Abraham is coming up in the push for Middle East peace

2. NPR ‘founding mother’ Susan Stamberg has died
By David Folkenflik | NPR | October 2025
“Susan Stamberg, an original National Public Radio staffer who went on to become the first U.S. woman to anchor a nightly national news program, died Thursday at the age of 87.”

3. Who will lose out when ACA health insurance subsidies expire?
By Alyssa Fowers | The Washington Post | October 2025
“About 80 percent of the people who benefit from them live in states that Donald Trump won in the 2024 presidential election. Many have no idea that their health insurance costs are on track to go up.”

4. Journalists turn in access badges, exit Pentagon rather than agree to new reporting rules
By David Bauder | Associated Press | October 2025
“News outlets were nearly unanimous in rejecting new rules imposed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that would leave journalists vulnerable to expulsion if they sought to report on information — classified or otherwise — that had not been approved by Hegseth for release.”

5. D’Angelo Saw His Future in the Past
By Craig Jenkins | Vulture :: New York Magazine | October 2025
“To understand the late musician’s originality, look to his covers of the greats.”

6. The feds are cutting off public money for all Planned Parenthoods, following a playbook that began in Texas
By Lindsey Byman | The Texas Tribune | October 2025
“Texas’ Planned Parenthood has lost half its clinics, but they continue to see thousands of patients a year.”

7. Warning: Our Stock Market Is Looking Like a Bubble
By Jared Bernstein and Ryan Cummings | The New York Times | October 2025
“You may remember the recession that followed the collapse of dot-com stocks in 2001. Or, worse, the housing crisis of 2008. Both times, a new idea — the internet, mortgage-backed securities and the arcane derivatives they unleashed — convinced investors to plunge so much money into the stock market that it inflated two speculative bubbles whose inevitable bursting created much economic pain. We believe it’s time to call the third bubble of our century: the A.I. bubble.”

8. Recession warning signs to watch: Goodbye lipstick, hello Hamburger Helper
By Rachel Lerman and Elena Lacey | The Washington Post | October 2025
“Everything is a ‘recession indicator’ online. Here’s what you really need to pay attention to.”

9. Why Is ICE So Aggressive Now? A Former ICE Chief Explains.
By Riya Misra | Politico Magazine | October 2025
“ICE used to arrest the ‘worst first.’ Under the new Trump administration, ‘those rules are gone,’ says a former ICE chief.”

10. ‘That Is Not What It Used to Look Like’
By Melissa Dahl | The Cut :: New York Magazine | October 2025
“Women are taking testosterone to treat menopause symptoms. An enlarged clitoris is one potential side effect.”

11. The Hunt for the World’s Oldest Story
By Manvir Singh | The New Yorker | October 2025
“From thunder gods to serpent slayers, scholars are reconstructing myths that vanished millennia ago. How much further can we go — and what might we find?”

12. The Riot Report
American Experience :: PBS | May 2024
“When Black neighborhoods in scores of cities erupted in violence during the summer of 1967, President Lyndon Johnson appointed the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders––informally known as the Kerner Commission––to answer three questions: What happened? Why did it happen? And what could be done to prevent it from happening again?”

13. Skip Apple’s new iPhone – five tips to make your old phone feel new again
By Prakhar Khanna | The Guardian | September 2025
“A few inexpensive upgrades can totally reinvigorate your old iPhone, and you can get even get the iPhone 17’s best feature completely free”

14. The Happiness of Choosing to Walk Alone
By Arthur C. Brooks | The Atlantic | October 2025
“Going along with an untruth for fear of disagreeing with others is a form of self-betrayal that will make you miserable.”

15. ‘Lee Miller was the bravest person I ever knew’: The pioneering photographer who captured the horror of World War Two
By Arwa Haider | BBC News | October 2025
“The unflinching, surreal gaze of the US artist and war photographer Lee Miller bore witness to both beauty and brutality. Now she is the subject of a major exhibition at Tate Britain.”

16. How Kevin Costner Lost Hollywood
By Peter Kieffer | The Hollywood Reporter | October 2025
“On-set brawls. Courtroom battles. Epic bombs. Why the world’s most bankable cowboy is suddenly shooting blanks”

17. As Amazon’s ‘flying rivers’ weaken with tree loss, scientists warn of worsening droughts
By Steven Grattan | Associated Press | September 2025
“Droughts have withered crops in Peru, fires have scorched the Amazon and hydroelectric dams in Ecuador have struggled to keep the lights on as rivers dry up. Scientists say the cause may lie high above the rainforest, where invisible “flying rivers” carry rain from the Atlantic Ocean across South America.”

18. Walter Cronkite signed off — and trust in the press steadily eroded
By Amaris Castillo | The Poynter 50 | August 2025
“Cronkite’s departure is seen in hindsight as one of the last moments when Americans collectively turned to a single, authoritative news source. Whether that’s true or just a convenient fable, there’s no doubt that trust is much lower now.”

19. Tootsie: One Great Dame
By Michael Sragow | The Criterion Collection | December 2014
“Tootsie isn’t merely about men and women grappling with volatile gender identities. It s about the unpredictable power that acting — taking on new roles — can have in people s lives.”

20. Sun Tzu and The Art of War
By Melvyn Bragg | In Our Time :: BBC 4 | 2016-2018
Also see: Euclid’s Elements | The Muses | Plasma | Math in the Early Islamic World

Interested in more like this? Since June 2011, Stillness of Heart‘s “Recommended” series has accumulated a magnificent collection of articles, essays, music, podcasts, historical analyses, cultural reflections, and documentaries. Scroll through the offerings here.

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

The Gaza war transformed the Middle East / The Special Forces culture / The vivid animated version of Beethoven’s ‘9th Symphony’ / Robot rabbits used to capture pythons in the Everglades / The risks and rewards of cold-water immersion

This week: The Gaza war transformed the Middle East / The Special Forces culture / The vivid animated version of Beethoven’s ‘9th Symphony’ / Robot rabbits used to capture pythons in the Everglades / The risks and rewards of cold-water immersion

Most of these items come from my social media networks. Follow me on BlueSky, Instagram, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and Facebook for more fascinating videos, photos, articles, essays, and criticism. Learn more about my academic background here and about me here.

1. Gold futures rise above $4,000 per ounce for the first time
By Wyatte Grantham-Philips | Associated Press | October 2025
“Gold sales can rise sharply when anxious investors seek secure investments for their money. Even before the shutdown, the asset — and other metals, like silver — had seen wide gains over the last year, as President Donald Trump ’s barrage of tariffs cause uncertainty around the outlook for the global economy. More recently, the prospect of lower interest rates has also made gold a more attractive investment than interest-bearing investments.”

2. After two years, Israel’s Gaza war has reshaped the Middle East
By Ishaan Tharoor | The Washington Post | October 2025
“Israel’s hard power preeminence in the Middle East seems paramount. But the country’s leaders — and the entire region — still face an array of political challenges.”

3. The American Experiment
By Jeffrey Goldberg | The Atlantic | October 2025
“At 250, the Revolution’s goals remain noble and indispensable.”

4. What is Insurrection Act, could it help Trump deploy troops to US cities?
By Sarah Shamim | Al Jazeera | October 2025
“The threat to invoke the Insurrection Act comes amid protests in Portland and legal challenges against his anti-immigration crackdown.”

5. Cold-water immersion may offer health benefits — and also presents risks
By Stephen Wade | Associated Press | October 2025
“Claims about the benefits of cold-water immersion date back centuries. Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence and the third American president, wrote toward the end of his life about using a cold foot bath daily for 60 years. He also owned a book published in 1706 on the history of cold-water bathing.”

6. America’s Vigilantes
By Matthieu Aikins | The New York Times Magazine | October 2025
“A four-part investigation of the culture of impunity in the U.S. Special Forces.”
Part 1: A Green Beret’s Confession | Part 2: Nine Bodies on a U.S. Base
Part 3: A Culture of Secrecy | Part 4: Lawlessness Comes Home

7. Doing almost anything is better with friends, research finds
By Richard Sima | The Washington Post | October 2025
“You might be leaving some happiness on the table by doing your everyday activities all by yourself.”

8. Octopuses prefer to use different arms for different tasks, scientists find
By Nicola Davis | The Guardian | September 2025
“Creatures favour front arms for most tasks, study suggests, despite fact all eight arms are capable of all actions.”

9. How Not to Get a Progressive Party off the Ground
By Arash Azizi | The Atlantic | October 2025
“The British left needs a strategy that can win elections instead of throwing them to the right.”

10. Stupidology
By William Davies | n+1 | Fall 2025
“The outsourcing of judgment.”

11. Going Beyond War’s Cliches
By Alisa Sopova | Nieman Lab | September 2025
“A collaborative project records Ukrainians’ day-to-day lives since the Russian invasion.”

12. See Beethoven’s entire ‘9th Symphony’ visualized in colorful animations
Open Culture | October 2025
“In a sense, ‘Ode to Joy’ is a natural choice for a musical representation of Europe, not just for its explicit themes, but also for the obvious ambition of the symphony that includes it to capture an entire civilization in musical form.”

13. JFK Wanted You to Watch This Movie Before He Was Assassinated
By Gordon F. Sander | Politico Magazine | February 2025
“The president had a hand in the making of a Cold War blockbuster.”

14. With ‘drug boat’ strikes, Trump leans into war on terror tactic against cartels
By Ryan Lucas | NPR | September 2025
“The administration has provided few details on the scope of its anti-cartel campaign, but it has adopted — at least in part — the blueprint of military strikes from the global war on terrorism that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.”

15. Robot rabbits the latest tool in Florida battle to control invasive Burmese pythons in Everglades
By Curt Anderson and Cody Jackson | Associated Press | August 2025
“They look, move and even smell like the kind of furry Everglades marsh rabbit a Burmese python would love to eat. But these bunnies are robots meant to lure the giant invasive snakes out of their hiding spots.”

16. The Art of the Impersonal Essay
By Zadie Smith | The New Yorker | September 2025
“In my experience, every kind of writing requires some kind of self-soothing Jedi mind trick, and, when it comes to essay composition, the rectangle is mine.”

17. When Mexico’s richest man threw ‘The New York Times’ a lifeline
By Rick Edmonds | The Poynter 50 | April 2025
“Before the bundles, the podcasts and the 10 million digital subscribers, there was a $250 million loan with a sky-high interest rate.”

18. The Book That Taught Nonna to Cook Is Coming to America
By Kim Severson | The New York Times | September 2025
“An English translation of Ada Boni’s The Talisman of Happiness, an indispensable guide for Italian home cooks since the 1920s, is finally on its way.”

19. The Fisher King: In the Kingdom of the Imperfect
By Bilge Ebiri | The Criterion Collection | June 2015
“Trauma and kindness. These are the two elements that govern The Fisher King, and they re represented by the two mythical figures that haunt the film.”

20. Augustine’s Confessions
By Melvyn Bragg | In Our Time :: BBC 4 | 2016-2018
Also see: Justinian’s Legal Code | Four Quartets | Purgatory | The Battle of Salamis

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

This week: Take a reading vacation / Why is Buc-ees thriving? / How to heal from burnout / Tony Blair returns to the Middle East’s political battlefields / Trump’s war on the Library of Congress is not new

Most of these items come from my social media networks. Follow me on BlueSky, Instagram, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and Facebook for more fascinating videos, photos, articles, essays, and criticism. Learn more about my academic background here and about me here.

1. Business is booming for the Beaver – but why?
By David Brown and Kaye Knoll | Texas Standard | October 2025
“A YouTuber investigates Buc-ee’s, the travel stop staple, and what makes it so successful.”

2. My First Murder
By Skip Hollandsworth | Texas Monthly | October 2025
“A legendary true crime writer revisits the case that launched his lifelong obsession.”

3. What the O.J. Verdict & Its Aftermath Revealed About Race in America
By Patrice Taddonio | Frontline :: PBS | October 2025
“Millions of households across the U.S. had tuned in to wall-to-wall coverage of onetime American icon O.J. Simpson’s trial for the brutal double murder of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ron Goldman. Then, on Oct. 3, 1995, came a televised verdict, watched by more than 150 million people, that shook the country along racial lines — sparking both consternation and celebration, and raising profound questions about the criminal justice system, fairness and America’s racial divide.”

4. Trump Is Waging a Culture War on the Library of Congress. It’s Been Done Before.
By Rebecca Brenner Graham | Politico Magazine | May 2025
“Thomas Jefferson wanted to donate his personal collection of books to the Library of Congress. But critics thought those books were un-American.”

5. Fool me once: the magical origin of the word ‘hoax’
By Scott Neuman | NPR | October 2025
“How did hocus pocus transform from the stage name of a magician … to a byword for the entire craft?”

6. Trump’s welcome message to new citizens isn’t very welcoming
By Chauncey DeVega | Salon | September 2025
“His message to naturalized citizens is part of an effort to redefine American identity and patriotism”

7. Tony Blair’s long experience in the Middle East is both his strength and his weakness
By Jill Lawless and Danica Kirka | Associated Press | September 2025
“Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has returned to the forefront of Middle East peace efforts after a U.S. peace plan on ending the Israel-Hamas war cast him in a leading role in overseeing the post-war administration and reconstruction of the Gaza Strip. It’s familiar territory for Blair, who spent eight years working to promote peace between Israel and the Palestinians as the international community’s envoy to the Middle East.”

8. I’m exhausted but am surviving. How can I heal from burnout without expensive time off?
By Eleanor Gordon-Smith | Leading Questions :: The Guardian | September 2025
“So many burnout books and blogs seem to assume a second income is present to take care of all the stuff that will still need doing if I take a break, but it’s just me. How do I take an actual break?”

9. The Graduate: Intimations of a Revolution
By Frank Rich | The Criterion Collection | February 2016
“[I]t straddles both the old and the new. It survives not just as a peerless Hollywood entertainment but as a one-of-a-kind cinematic portrait of America when it, like Benjamin Braddock at the edge of his parents swimming pool, teetered on the brink.”

10. How artists and musicians are responding to Trump’s 2nd term
By Jeffrey Brown | PBS News Hour | September 2025
“Rock legend Bruce Springsteen publicly blasted President Trump and his policies, saying ‘we’re living through particularly dangerous times.’ As Trump increasingly targets the arts, artists are faced with the question of whether to speak out or keep their heads down.”

11. Something Very Tiny Is Following Earth Around the Sun
By Robin George Andrews | The New York Times | September 2025
“The object, the latest ‘quasi-moon’ detected by astronomers, could be with us for almost another 60 years.”

12. The Borderlands War, 1915-20
By Christopher Rose, Joan Neuberger and Henry Wiencek | 15 Minute History :: UT Department of History | 2014-2020
Also see: The Rise and Fall of the Latvian National Communists | Slavery and Abolition in Iran | The Amateur Photography Movement in the Soviet Union | The Russian Empire on the Eve of World War 1

13. Beyond the beach read: The new wave of bookish travel
By Lizzie Enfield | BBC News | September 2025
“Forget the solo beach paperback: travellers are now joining structured reading retreats that mix books, place and community.”

14. How to Build a Dictionary: On the Hard Art of Popular Lexicography
By Ilan Stavans | LitHub | September 2025
“This conversation concentrates on the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) as a Platonic model not only within the English language but in countless other linguistic ecosystems. It looks at Samuel Johnson as the cathartic figure whose lexicographic work shaped modern English dictionaries. And it ponders the sprawling OED products and compares the enterprise to its American counterpart, Merriam-Webster.”

15. What Teen Novels Are Capable Of
By Isabel Fattal | The Atlantic | September 2025
“These books can help young people come to terms with the thoughts that feel too scary to say out loud.”

16. ‘Warrior ethos’ mistakes military might for true security – and ignores the wisdom of Eisenhower
By Monica Duffy Toft | The Conversation | September 2025
“In the aftermath of World War II, U.S. leaders wanted to emphasize a defensive rather than aggressive military posture as they entered the Cold War, a decades-long standoff between the United States and Soviet Union defined by a nuclear arms race, ideological rivalry and proxy wars short of direct great-power conflict.”

17. The parlance of pilots
By Mark Vanhoenacker | Aeon | September 2025
“High above London, Tokyo and Cairo, the language of the cockpit is technical, obscure, geeky – and irresistibly romantic”

18. The night the skies over Baghdad were illuminated, the 24-hour news cycle took over
By Tom Jones | The Poynter 50 | March 2025
“CNN’s live coverage of Operation Desert Storm launched a new era in television news”

19. Should College Get Harder?
By Joshua Rothman | The New Yorker | September 2025
“A.I. is coming for knowledge work, and yet college seems to be getting easier. Does something need to change?”

20. Persepolis
By Melvyn Bragg | In Our Time :: BBC 4 | 2015-2018
Also see: The California Gold Rush | Sappho | The Earth’s Core | The Science of Glass

Visit Mission Concepcion on Oct. 16

For just one night, on Friday, Oct. 16, 2015, at 8 p.m., an artist will project light onto the building, virtually “restoring” the Mission to its former glory.

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I’m a history teacher at Northwest Vista College in San Antonio. I teach both parts of the introduction to U.S. history. HIST 1301 begins the tour in Native America and ends with post-Civil War Reconstruction. HIST 1302 begins with Reconstruction and brings it to the modern era.

Every teacher ends the second half in different places: the Reagan Revolution, 9/11, the election of Barack Obama. Because I’m emphasizing the relevance of history to current events (if they leave my class with nothing else, at least they will be more sensitive to and appreciative of the historical roots of news events all around them), I intend to end the second half with the rise of ISIS.

I’ve slowly come to appreciate the historical richness and importance of San Antonio, if only because of my lifelong failure to fully appreciate Mexican and Tejano culture. But San Antonio has captured my heart and, more importantly, my respect as a historian. I’ve tried to share my new enthusiasm with my students by making them aware of the truly unique place of San Antonio in Spanish, Mexican, Texas, Confederate, and U.S. history.

One of their extra-credit opportunities is to visit one of the San Antonio Missions (a visit to the Alamo doesn’t count). They have to take a picture of themselves next to a sign indicating which Mission they visited, show it to me, and then they get an extra ten points towards their final grade for the semester.

As I just told them on our class blog, Ortiz History, I recently learned of one more reason to visit the beautiful Mission Concepcion. For just one night, on Friday, Oct. 16, 2015, at 8 p.m., an artist will project light onto the building, virtually “restoring” the Mission to its former glory. That will be the highlight of a three-hour festival of food trucks, picnics, historical tours, music, and family-friendly activities spread throughout the mission grounds. Festivities begin at 6 p.m.

Learn more about the event on its Facebook page.

Illustrating the heart in a million different ways

Some friends have told me how much they love the photos I include with most of my posts.

Some friends have told me how much they love the photos that accompany most of my posts. Their compliments honor me.

I don’t consider myself a photographer, just someone who loves interesting patterns — the more abstract and colorful and contrasted the better. I tend to find beauty in everything I see.

My simple Tumblr blog collects and displays the best of the art I’ve used on Stillness of Heart, along with a variety of other odd photos, gifs, and videos.

Follow me on Tumblr, and enjoy.

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

Whitney Houston dead / Stories of the unemployed / Soviet ghosts in Afghanistan / Valentine’s Day gift ideas / Inspiring children

Most of these great items come from my Twitter feed or Facebook news feed. Follow me on Twitter and on Facebook for more fascinating videos, articles, essays and criticism.

1. In Afghanistan, a Soviet Past Lies in Ruins
By Graham Bowley | The New York Times | Feb. 11
“As poignant in its imperial ambition as in its otherworldliness, the Soviet-era swimming pool atop Swimming Pool Hill here is as good a symbol as any of the doubtful legacy of empires. ”

2. 10 Far-out Valentine’s Gifts
Oddee | Feb. 9
“Valentine’s Day is coming and you still have no idea what to buy for your beloved one? We have compiled a list of 10 of the best strangest, weirdest and most unusual valentine’s gifts you can actually buy.”

3. 20 Reasons Your Flight Attendant Might Not Be Happy-Go-Lucky
Rants of a Sassy Stew | Feb. 10
“If your flight attendant isn’t chipper and licking your ass throughout the flight, there is probably a very good reason behind it.”

4. The Istanbul Art-Boom Bubble
By Suzy Hansen | The New York Times Magazine | Feb. 10
“It appears that Istanbul … is having its moment of rebirth. These newly wealthy corners of the East seem full of possibilities, but what kind of culture will the Turks create?”

5. Faces beyond the numbers of long-term unemployed
By Sharon Cohen | Associated Press | Feb. 11
“The frustrations of one 53-year-old North Carolina man are multiplied millions of times over across time zones and generations in a country still gripped by economic anxiety, despite increasing signs of recovery.”

6. Whitney Houston, superstar of records, films, dies
By Nekesa Mumbi Moody | Associated Press | Feb. 11
“She wowed audiences with effortless, powerful, and peerless vocals that were rooted in the black church but made palatable to the masses with a pop sheen.”

7. How war stories inspire children to learn
BBC News | Feb. 11
“Many fictional tales of loyalty and survival – often based on true wartime events – have also helped children to understand what happened.”

8. The case for global currency
By David Wolman | Salon | Feb. 11
“Would it make more sense to have one currency for the entire world?”

9. Rereading: Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes
By Briam Dillon | The Guardian | March 26
“Grieving for his mother, Roland Barthes looked for her in old photos – and wrote a curious, moving book that became one of the most influential studies of photography”

10. The siege of Leningrad
Witness :: BBC News | January 28
“When Leningrad was cut off from the rest of Russia by German troops during World War Two, one third of its population died.”

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TUNES

Tonight I’m spending some time with the blues, specifically with the Texas Blues Café. Check out the line-up and then listen here.

1. Walter Trout — Blues Deluxe
2. Paul Thorn — Starvin For Your Kisses
3. Whiskey Myers — Thief Of Hearts
4. 8 Ball Down — Walk Down Blues
5. Z Tribe — LiL Hurricane
6. Robbie King Band — Wanting You
7. Brooks & Dunn — Caroline
8. John Fogerty — Swamp River Days
9. George Thorogood — You Talk To Much
10. Grace Potter — Sugar
11. 2 Slim and the Tail Draggers — Mother Load
12. Bo Cox — Gone
13. Van Wilks — Long Way To Crawl

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

Romney’s tax returns / Why we love Picasso / Appreciate the introvert / Love and Islam / Final JFK tapes unveiled

Most of these great items come from my Twitter feed or Facebook news feed. Follow me on Twitter and on Facebook for more fascinating videos, articles, essays and criticism. Read past recommendations from this series here.

1. Mitt Romney’s tax returns shed some light on his investment wealth
By Lori Montgomery | PostPolitics :: The Washington Post | Jan. 23
“Mitt Romney offered a partial snapshot of his vast personal fortune late Monday, disclosing income of $21.7 million in 2010 and $20.9 million last year — virtually all of it profits, dividends or interest from investments.”

2. The Rude Welcome That Awaits Rick Perry Back in Texas
By Erica Grieder | The New Republic | Jan. 21
“According to Public Policy Polling, his approval rating in the state now stands at 42 percent. Surprisingly, that is lower than Barack Obama’s, at 44 percent.”

3. JFK library to release last of his secret tapes
By Bridget Murphy | Associated Press | Jan. 24
“The tapes include discussions of conflict in Vietnam, Soviet relations and the race to space, plans for the 1964 Democratic Convention and re-election strategy. There also are moments with his children.”

4. Nerve Endings: Female, 19, New York
Nerve | Jan. 24
“He was taking it well, until he showed up at my door, drunk and sobbing into the buzzer …”

5. Obama can win big with FDR formula
By Robert S. McElvaine | Politico | Jan. 23
“No president for more than 70 years has been reelected with unemployment above 7.5 percent — as it is likely to be in November. If we go a little further back, however, unemployment was at 16.9 percent in 1936.”

6. Lifting Veil on Love and Islam
Ny Neil MacFarquhar | The International Herald Tribune | Jan. 23
“Even as the editors, both American-born daughters of immigrants, sought to fight society’s tendency to consider all Muslims extremists, they also struggled with the cultural proscription against describing private lives in public.”

7. Time for introverts to get some appreciation
By Sharon Jayson | USA Today | Jan. 23
“Because introverts tend to be more socially aloof … introversion is related to certain types of disorders, such as social anxiety or depression.”

8. Why we love Picasso
By Blake Gopnik | Newsweek | Jan. 23
“Pablo Picasso was the most inventive artist the West has ever known, and his drawings let us watch him inventing.”

9. This much I know: Kazuo Ishiguro
By Chris Sullivan | The Observer | February 2011
“As the film adaptation of his bestselling novel Never Let Me Go hits the screens, the author reflects on past passions, fatherhood and critical abuse”

10. What Makes Teeth Chatter
By C. Claiborne Ray | Q&A :: The New York Times | July 2011
“What might cause teeth to chatter other than the cold?”

Rebecca Aguilar

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North River Notes

Observations on the Hudson River as it passes through New York City. The section of the Hudson which passes through New York is historically known as the North River, called this by the Dutch to distinguish it from the Delaware River, which they knew as the South River. This stretch of the Hudson is still often referred to as the North River by local mariners today. All photos copyright Daniel Katzive unless otherwise attributed. For more frequent updates, please follow northriverblog on Facebook or Instagram.

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