• Brocken spectres are the terrifying ghosts that appear when you cast a shadow on a cloud that has a light source behind it. • Marcin Wichary is getting ready to launch his many–years-in-the-making book about keyboards, Shift Happens. The effort and dedication to making this thing is visible in every element of how he has put it together, including the book’s delightful website. • Did you know the CIA has a museum?
I started tracking my book reading habits a few years ago as a way of remembering what I’ve been consuming. Extra benefit: It’s also helped me see patterns or trends. The trouble is that I can also now look back and see when I’m losing the plot. Here’s what I mean: Last year my reading pace felt like it had fallen off a cliff—there were three months or so of total freeze during the pandemic. […]
“I believe that the books and stories we fall in love with make us who we are, or, not to claim too much, the beloved tale becomes a part of the way in which we understand things and make judgments and choices in our daily lives. A book may cease to speak to us as we grow older, and our feeling for it will fade. Or we may suddenly, as our lives shape and hopefully […]
A lot of things were hard this year. We had it better than many, better than most. No serious illnesses here, mainly just sadness and loneliness and tedium stitched together with moments of dread and panic. But those are all things that you can cope with. In my head, they were circumstances you could adapt to, even if you didn’t like them. People are capable of a lot. But the change that probably surprised me […]
A man sits, hands hovering over a keyboard, puffy encircled eyes turned to a square of sky he witnesses through the window and between the rooftops. Over there, his kid watches The Simpsons. He’s really into The Simpsons right now. Over in the other direction, the kitchen is strewn with the debris of a Christmas season that has definitely been well spent, but is now definitely well spent. He recalls these twelve months that are crawling out of view. […]
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