The Story of Writing

You have a beautiful family and, though I don't know you, I'm so happy your daughter is better.
I wish you all happy, long lives.

Easy for you to say (or type)

A photo of a jelly-filled doughnut, with powdered sugar on top = berliner.

Ich bin eine berliner:

Is it Jim that looks most like you?

One per day.
One per week for newbies.
For the first week.

So thankful The Onion exists:

Oh, look, a near-perfect analog of u.s. politics/sacrifice:

His writing often calls for a return to sustainable agriculture, promoting the idea that our connection to the land is essential for both personal and environmental well-being. Berry's writing is sometimes a gentle nudge toward community, conservation, and simplicity. Other times, it is a direct urging for us to live harmoniously with the natural world. But occasionally, his prose and poetry confront consumerist culture, encouraging us to rethink our values and prioritize the preservation of our planet. Berry's writing continues to encourage working toward a more sustainable future.

A color photograph of Wendell Berry (left) being awarded the 2010 National Medal of Arts and Humanities by President Barack Obama. Photo credit: Mark Wilson/Getty Images Image source: White House/Getty Images

It is the birthday of the farmer who wrote,
“The Earth is what we all have in common.”
American writer Wendell Berry was born on this day in 1934.
#BookSky #Writer #Poet #Sustainability #Environment #BOTD

With her husband, Charles Austin Beard, she co-authored The Rise of American Civilization, which challenged conventional narratives of the time. As a founder of the World Center for Women's Archives, Mary Ritter Beard ensured that some records of women’s contributions to society were preserved and celebrated. Her work helped the subject of women’s history to become an academic discipline. Beard’s writing and advocacy for women’s suffrage, organized labor, and women’s archives helped others to see the contributions that women made since the birth of civilization. By the end of the 20th Century, other academics began to integrate women’s contributions to history in their publications.

A sepia-toned photo of Mary Ritter (left) and five other students of DePauw University in the 1890s. The hats they're wearing deserve an effusive write up of their own. It's impossible to do them justice here. They are festooned with flowers, enough to fill a small greenhouse. Image source: DePauw University Archives and Special Collections

It is the birthday, in 1876, of American historian and suffragist Mary Ritter Beard. She saw women and the work of women as essential parts of history.
#BookSky #Writer #Historian #WomensHistory #BOTD

He is considered a French master of short stories. His work gave a precise and even elegant voice to the disillusioned lower- and middle-classes. He was a member of an elite group of authors that included Gustave Flaubert and Emile Zola, who described Maupassant as a “terrific oarsman able to row fifty miles on the Seine in a single day for pleasure.”

A sepia-toned photo portrait of Guy de Maupassant. His dark hair is brushed back, his mustache is fuller and more unruly than a pillow case stuffed with cats and he has a soul patch. He's dressed formally: white collared shirt, neck tie, suit coat and vest. Image source: Gallica, the Digital Library of France

It is the birthday of the author who wrote,
“It is the lives we encounter that make life worth living.”
French writer Guy de Maupassant was born on this day in 1850.
#BookSky #ShortStory #Writer #History #BOTD

This story begins when John Peter Zenger ran articles describing how the British colonial governor of New York was giving himself a pay raise by moving additional money from the city’s account into his own. The governor accused Zenger of seditious libel. Many colonists saw the legal action as a calculated move to silence dissent and control the press. The judge presiding over this case was an ally of the British colonial governor. In court, though, Zenger’s defense focused on members of the jury and convinced them of two things: Zenger’s reporting was accurate, and reporting the truth should be a valid defense against libel charges. The trial made it clear to colonists that freedom of the press was essential, especially when the press could prove its factual evidence when being critical of the government.

A b/w illustration of the court scene in the trial of John Peter Zenger. The text at the bottom of the image quotes Zenger's trial attorney, Andrew Hamilton (no relation to U.S. Founding Father Alexander Hamilton). It reads: "The question before the Court and you, Gentlemen of the jury, is not of small or private concern. It is not the cause of one poor printer, nor of New York alone, which you are now trying. No! It may in its consequence affect every free man that lives under a British government on the main of America. It is the best cause. It is the cause of liberty." Image source: Historical Society of the New York Courts.

On this day in 1735, a writer with the New York Weekly Journal was acquitted in a case that underscored freedom of the press in the American colonies – and in the independent nation they would later become.
#History #OTD #FreedomOfThePress

Amazing, yes.
Terrifyingly accurate, too.

This is a kind of “cold” civil war.

Interesting times.

His work explored themes of race, identity, and history. Hayden is best known for his poem "Middle Passage," which vividly depicts the horrors of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. His writing mixes literary formalism, his experience as a Black man, and his emotional depth. Based on his contributions to American literature, he was named the first Black poet laureate of the United States in 1976.

A b/w photo portrait of Robert Hayden. He is wearing his thick eyeglasses, a suit, and bowtie. Photo credit: unknown

It is the birthday of the American poet and teacher who wrote,“We must not be frightened nor cajoled
into accepting evil as deliverance from evil.
We must go on struggling to be human,
though monsters of abstraction
police and threaten us.”
Robert Hayden was born on this day in 1913.
#BookSky #Poet

“Confabulation.” It’s a word you are going to be hearing a lot in the coming months. President Trump has always been willing to mislead people when it was to his advantage. Even his supporters recognize this. Hence the famous admonition to “take Trump seriously, not literally.” But what Trump is doing now is something different. Confabulation is sometimes called “honest lying,” because the person doing it genuinely believes what he’s saying, even if it is obviously and patently false.

For Trump, the day we could no longer pretend everything is fine came on July 15, when he told a lengthy story about his uncle, John Trump, who he claimed taught at MIT and held three degrees in “nuclear, chemical, and math.” His uncle, according to Trump, once told him how he had taught Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, and how very smart Kaczynski was. Trump’s uncle was indeed a professor at MIT, but everything else in this story is pure confabulation. Trump’s uncle didn’t have degrees in “nuclear, chemical, and math” — he had degrees in electrical engineering and physics. And Kaczynski did not go to MIT at all — he went to Harvard. But most telling of all, it is categorically impossible for Trump’s uncle to have told him any such story. Kaczynski became publicly known as the Unabomber when he was arrested in 1996. Trump’s uncle, the MIT professor, died in 1985. In other words, Trump’s uncle could not have told him the story because there was, literally, no story to tell during his lifetime.

Difficulty with mathematical concepts is another early warning sign of dementia. Now watch Trump attempting to explain how he is going to make drug prices go down by “1,000 percent, 600 percent, 500 percent, 1,500 percent.” That’s complete nonsense, unless drug companies will be paying patients to accept prescriptions, since reducing drug prices by 100 percent would mean they were free. Certainly, someone who got a business degree from Wharton and has spent his life running a company would know how percentages work.

Here's a good and absolutely damning description of trump's dementia:
thehill.com/opinion/camp...
Pertinent excerpts:

Trump’s mental decline is undeniable — so what now? hemselves, that there is a problem, just as Biden’s supporters did for him.    Donald Trump is showing all the signs of suffering from dementia. If this were a neighbor, a parent, or a family frien…

It's confabulation.

Here's a really good and utterly damning description of trump's mental decline:

thehill.com/opinion/camp...

Trump’s mental decline is undeniable — so what now? hemselves, that there is a problem, just as Biden’s supporters did for him.    Donald Trump is showing all the signs of suffering from dementia. If this were a neighbor, a parent, or a family frien…

This lays it out pretty clearly:

thehill.com/opinion/camp...

One of the more well-known English Romanticists, Shelley is remembered for his combination of lyrical writing and radical ideas: free love, atheism, rebelling against his parents. He was in many ways, the model entitled college kid. But he put his intellect and his writing in service to political and social reform – and to liberation of the oppressed.

An undated, color painting of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Photo of painting: Oxford Image source: The Guardian (news website)

It is the birthday of the poet and author who wrote,
“Joy, once lost, is pain.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley was born on this day in 1792.
#BookSky #Poet #Poetry #Writer #History #BOTDA

After demonstrating his mechanical ingenuity in Napoleon’s army, Conte was asked to come up with a way to make pencils that did not rely on graphite ore. Before the 1790s, France imported the material from Great Britain, but the English imposed a blockade on France. Conte mixed powdered graphite with clay and smushed it between two halves of a wooden cylinder. In a similar process, he also invented the Conte crayon, drawing sticks that became – and remain – quite popular with artists.

An illustration of Nicolas-Jacque Conte. He is wearing the eyepatch that became a distinguishing feature after he lost his left eye in an accident caused by an explosion of hydrogen gas. Image source: Britannica

It is the birthday of the inventor of the modern pencil.
French soldier and tinkerer Nicolas-Jacques Conte was born on this day in 1755.
#History #OTD #Writing #Pencil #ConteCrayon

It required broadcasters to present opposing perspectives on controversial issues. There was no stipulation for equal time or the way views were debated or discussed on air. The rise in the nation’s political polarization since the 1980s is partly attributed to the end of the Fairness Doctrine.

On this day in 1987, at the direction of then-Pres. Ronald Reagan, the US Federal Communications Commission rescinded the Fairness Doctrine.
#History #OTD #MonetizingBroadcastOfHate

Periodic reminder:

"A mobster who knew Trump socially said of him once, 'He'd lie to you about what time of day it is - just for the practice.'"

-John Connolly, former FBI agent who was convicted of 2nd-degree murder and racketeering

I’m sorry but I really have to stand up for myself and independent media here. Everyone is crediting Ken Delanian for the Maxwell sex offender waiver story, but I was hours ahead of him. Hours. Independent media is important.

This looks excellent

Yes.
And I do love that he failed English three times.
I don't think anyone with his faculties could repeatedly fail a class without intentionally thinking "f-ck this," quite often.
It's not that he couldn't pass the class. He just refused to.

First they came for the civil servants...

Then they came after academia...

Then they came for get scientists and technicians...

Then they came for public broadcasting...

Now they are after the economists.

Based on this pattern I can reasonably conclude the next purge will be Fire Fighters.

Yesterday a sand snake crawled by just outside my tent door, and for the first time in my life I looked upon a snake not with a creeping phobia but with a sudden and surprising feeling of compassion. Somehow I pitied him, because he was a snake instead of a man. And I don't know why I felt that way, for I feel pity for all men too, because they are men. It may be that the war has changed me, along with the rest. It is hard for anyone to analyze himself. I know that I find more and more that I wish to be alone, and yet I believe I have a new patience with humanity that I've never had before. When you've lived with the unnatural mass cruelty that mankind is capable of inflicting upon itself, you find yourself dispossessed of the faculty for blaming one poor man for the triviality of his faults. I don't see how any survivor of war can ever be cruel to anything, ever again. –Ernie Pyle, "Here is Your War," 1943

It is Ernie Pyle's birthday.
He wrote about becoming dispossessed of the faculty for blaming people for the triviality of their faults.
Admirable. I'll try it. Doubt it will last the day.
But I would genuinely like to remember Pyle today.
He remains an unparalleled correspondent.
#BookSky

Yes, gents.
Make that mouse look good.

He failed English three times and never graduated from high school. But he enlisted in the Marines at the age of 17, shortly after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Uris fought in some of the hardest won theaters of combat in Guadalcanal and Tarawa. He was sent back to the states for treatment after contracting dengue fever and malaria. He began writing a book which became the best seller Battle Cry. After adapting the book into a screenplay and producing another novel, Uris wrote another best seller, his most popular book Exodus. He also wrote the screenplay for the 1957 movie Gunfight at the OK Corral.

A b/w photo of Leon Uris Image source: The Globe and Mail

It is the birthday of the author who wrote,
“Why must we fight for the right to live, over and over, each time the sun rises?”
American soldier and writer Leon Uris was born on this day in 1924.
#BookSky #Writer #History #BOTD

Love this 🩵 @wintersonworld.bsky.social

Good morning 🌞