Jesse Raber

Also had a neat shelf of chessy books from Chandler to Sally Rooney, including some modern romance and YA stuff, alongside the expected sets based on Alice in Wonderland, Wizard of Oz, Winnie the Pooh, etc.

Moby-Dick chess

Master and Margarita chess

Nabokov chess books

T.S. Eliot's chess stuff

From the excellent "Chess & Literature" exhibit at the World Chess Hall of Fame:

- a "man vs nature" Moby-Dick set
- a Master and Margarita set
- Nabokov's chess novel and his book combining poems and chess puzzles
- T.S. Eliot's travel set and puzzle notebook, both treasured heirlooms from his dad

This is obviously true but also there are much deeper currents that go back to before the Great Migration. I honestly think you can't understand this stuff without going back to, like, provincial contempt for Restoration London and Enlightenment Paris.

Cahokia Mounds: America's First City by William Iseminger

but also the things you buy on sight

Out of Many, One: Portraits of America's Immigrants by George W. Bush

sometimes the pleasure of browsing bookstores is seeing all the things that you will not be buying

Also in St. Louis: the pianist in a dixieland jazz band asks, idly, if anyone in the audience speaks Yiddish. "Kinda!" I shout. They're about to play "Bei Mir Bist Du Schön." We go back and forth about how to translate the title. (His notes have "To Me You Are Grand"; I say "Ya Look Good to Me.")

Apparently Gateway Arch NP was first called "Jeffersonian National Expansion Park" and was focused on Anglo migration into the Louisiana Purchase. I.e., a celebration of the de-gallicization of the West.

Of course the French fur traders built a settlement here, it had that cool arch

Visited the St. Louis arch today. It was kind of startling to realize it wasn't built til the 1960s -- it's so identified with the city that I imagine it being there when Lewis and Clark set out, or as a white pixelated feature in *Oregon Trail*.

High School English and the Making of American Readers Abstract. The high school English classroom is the most influential literary institution in the United States, and the most overlooked by literary scholars

As some of you may know, I’m writing a book on the history of high school English in the United States, and I’m excited to share a new article from that project—“High School English and the Making of American Readers”—out today in American Literary History! 🧵

academic.oup.com/alh/article/...

I dunno, it kinda makes sense that Odysseus is who Good Will Hunting grows up to be

What is home without
Plumtree's Potted Meat? Incomplete.
With it an abode of bliss.

maybe it will happen today

Thanks! So far the plans include City Museum, Cahokia, the "mosaic church," probably the Arch, and as many bookstores and as much kid-friendly live music as we can find.

from *Meet Me in St. Louis* (1944)

expecting it to be like this

Headed to St. Louis this weekend. What's good there? Have been through a few times but never really explored it before.

I don't use the phrase to describe myself but I think some people use it to stake out a position like "there shouldn't be a jewish ethnostate but jews should be allowed to live in that place and their safety should be protected," as distinct from, uh, some less savory brands of anti-zionism

in a text string after the shooting, a fellow agent told Exum he's a "legend"
"Beers on me"

{deep sigh}

Please tell me I don't have to write this book

Please, HaShem, tell me that SOMEone else understands this meme I just made:

It's the freshwater version of the whaleman's chapel from Moby-Dick

the Oxford Illustrated Book of American Children's Poems is also fantastic

Been reading poetry with young kids for years now. Some recs:

- on the lighter side: X.J. Kennedy, *City Kids*; anything by Jack Prelutsky

- more substantial: Gwendolyn Brooks, *Bronzeville Boys and Girls*; Eloise Greenfield, *Honey I Love*; also the entire Poetry for Kids/ for Young People series

And it's not just pressure, but also the reality of an ever more rat-racey society. Malcolm Harris's *Kids These Days* makes this argument.

thanks!

Sorry if this is an obnoxious question but is there a free link to the book intro containing the model reading of "The Red Wheelbarrow?"

Do you have substantive objections to Kelly, or is it just about needing to avoid splitting the anti-RK vote?

mine is mustard and cheese, usually some presliced cheddar or something as a kid. later I was pleased that Bloom eats a gorgonzola and mustard sandwich for lunch -- as the perfect compromise between gluttony and asceticism -- in *Ulysses*.

Today's etymological find:

The "jan-" in "janitor" is cognate with "Janus," the Roman god of doors. Cerberus is described in Horace as the "ianitor" of the underworld.

63rd St beach in an intricate pattern of snow and mud

Slush plains with a ridge of drift ice hillocks in the distance

Melt and mud commence

oh?