Dan Roche

It was wonderful to be interviewed by Dr. Miranda Melcher about my recent nonfiction exploration of the obscure world of prosthetic eye-makers for the @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social podcast. A generous and thoughtful conversation that I very much appreciated. newbooksnetwork.com/eyes-by-hand

The buck stops nowhere in DC

Bookshop: Buy books online. Support local bookstores. An online bookstore that financially supports local independent bookstores and gives back to the book community.

Bookshop.org is a very good alternative

Shoulda been the answer today

Flag at half-mast for Jimmy Carter. Hope no one gets poked in the face after walking out the front door.

In the “Books” section of the NYT’s notable deaths of 2024, there are 32 writers, with the average age at death of 86.69, and 14 of them made it into their 90s. Only one was in her 60s. Not bad for people who sit a lot.

The small brilliances count — like someone figuring out that a grid on the back of wrapping paper would easy and useful.

What will you do with the extra daylight today?

Best name for any youth sports team I ever played on? The Michigan Milk Producers. (Ice hockey, 1974, Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan)

Ever buy a book you’ve been meaning to read for 20 years and then, 40 pages in, realize: “Eh, shoulda read this 20 years ago”? Got one of those now. Excellent book, no doubt, but its time seems to have passed for me. And it’s 500 pages, so I think I’ll move on.

Eating crackers while licking the envelopes of outgoing Christmas cards = trouble

Agreed

People, don’t jump out your shorts at some “fact” that appalls you on social media. Take a sec and double-check it. The congressional raise will be 3.8% ($6,600), not $60,000.

I really want my new college students to write well, but when they turn in something very good I can’t help but wonder if it’s really theirs. I’m trying to remember whether pure joy at seeing successful student writing really came easily before ChatGPT, even with the occasional plagiarisms.

I am essentially on a desert island because I listen to only one CD all the time: Greg Brown’s “Covenant.” Ok, a Lucinda Williams did sneak in last week.

A trip to the grocery store is always exercise in equanimity, as I recognize the drivers cutting diagonally the parking lot rows and do not condemn them. I see, but I cannot cure.

I wonder if my house plants know by now they’ll be getting a drink when I carry them into the kitchen.

Just went to Target and it looked like a mob had marauded through today—clothes on the floor, barely a shelf not in disarray. And yet plenty of people in red shirts working. Very odd scene. Are we in a store-as-teenager’s bedroom era? I bought my pens and made haste outta there.

Only 2 weeks till the days start getting longer. With the warm November, that seems like no time at all.

I don’t like to spend the day killing things, but where are these big black flies in the kitchen coming from in December?

Is bluesky a pie picture place? If so, salted caramel apple.

An unexpected bonus of not turning on the radio since the election: Freedom from the easy tiresomeness of “classic hits.”(The radio landscape in these parts is pretty barren.) I don’t mind being done with The Eagles et. al.

Just finished THE EMPEROR OF ALL MALADIES, and it’s one of the best science/medical books around. Now I need to read Siddhartha Mukherjee’s other books. Are they all 500 pages?? So be it!

I have an urge to buy something and I think it will be a fountain pen. Plus more good paper.

When a student I don’t know asked to interview me on a subject I’d have to read up on in the midst of much work with my own students, I thought: Do I have time for this? But I made it, and it made my week, as I hope it helped hers.

Blooming on its ol’ reliable schedule

Just had a long zoom with 2 friends I’ve been pals with for 40 years, and we get on just as well as when we shared a house in grad school in Columbus in 1985. I’m thankful for that continuity.

“What is real but compassion / as we move from birth to death” — the Greg Brown lyric in my head most these days