Phil Oliver

Bully for kindness Mean people are mostly made, not born. Same for their opposites.

open.substack.com/pub/philoliv...

Grant Quote shared via Kindle: "Mark Twain had struggled with similar cravings for alcohol and tobacco. When they discussed the subject, Grant mentioned that although doctors had urged him to sip whiskey or...

Grant's battlefield heroism was matched by the courage to complete his memoirs, pain and pressure be damned, as cancer closed in and the light dimmed. When he finished writing, he was done.

Equally impressive was his winning battle against alcohol. Twain understood…

Un-degenerate conversation The best books talk to us, and amongst themselves.

Dennett, Rorty, & a pair of Hofstadters open.substack.com/pub/philoliv...

The Theory of Organic Evolution Darwin, unlike many of his peers, possessed the breadth of vision to grasp the meaning of evolution's facts

The Theory of Organic Evolution. Audio recording: Winterton Curtis (1922), ch VII. open.substack.com/pub/philoliv...

Science and Human Affairs from the Viewpoint of Biology by Winterton C. Curtis (Harcourt Brace, 1922)

A “humanistic philosophy of life” extollling “spiritual joy in living” that we ought not to forget. open.substack.com/pub/philoliv...

A secular beatitude and a humanism without hubris: the neglected humanism of W.C. Curtis

How to resist the “flatlining of thought”… open.substack.com/pub/philoliv...

It's the birthday of E.B. White (books by this author), born Elwin Brooks White in Mount Vernon, New York (1899)… who said: "I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day."

Added a colorful & hopeful new freedom flag today ☀️

Independence! May we each find it in our own way; and may we collectively declare ourselves free of the ignorance, bigotry, and cruelty that have betrayed this nation's noblest ideals.

Endorsing Twain’s patriotism and Emerson’s independence open.substack.com/pub/philoliv...

The Writer's Almanac for Thursday, July 3, 2025 - Garrison Keillor Today is the birthday of Franz Kafka, born in Prague (1883). He was unhappy for most of his life: terrified of his tyrannical father, plagued by a whole host of psychosomatic illnesses, and tormented ...

Contrary to the Woody Allen line suggesting Kafka’s perpetual moroseness (“self-esteem a notch below Kafka’s”), “he found love and happiness in the last year of his life…’Everything was done with laughter…[he was]always cheerful. He liked to play; he was a born playmate, always ready for some fun.’”

Back to Dayton My first landlord was one of the scientific experts whose testimony on behalf of John Scopes was disallowed in 1925. I knew him as a kind old gentleman who gave me money... and shelter.

Looking forward to the centenary re-enactment of (an interpretation of) the 1925 Scopes Trial, this July in Dayton TN.
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Happy anniversary to Darwin’s Bulldog

Tybee Island pier, June ‘22

First thing I saw from my bedroom window this morning. Another good reason to wake early.

Scenes from last week’s Berkshires holiday

A patriot must be concerned with the real world, which is the only place where his country can be loved and sustained. A patriot has universal values, standards by which he judges his nation, always wishing it well—and wishing that it would do better.

Nationalism is relativist, since the only truth is the resentment we feel when we contemplate others. As Danilo Kiš put it, nationalism 'has no universal values, aesthetic or ethical.' A patriot, by contrast, wants the nation to live up to its ideals, which means asking us to be our best selves.

A nationalist encourages us to be our worst, and then tells us that we are the best. A nationalist, 'although endlessly brooding on power, victory, defeat, revenge,' wrote Orwell, tends to be 'uninterested in what happens in the real world.'

Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny, which I picked up at the Williams College bookstore a week ago, was an ideal flight companion on our way home on No Kings Day eve. “The president is a nationalist, which is not at all the same thing as a patriot…”

Yesterday we ascended Mount Greylock, the highest peak in Massachusetts. Today we fly home, renewed by our holiday and resolved to resist the pathetic little aspiring autocrats who wouldn’t recognize an elevated perspective if it bit them. And it will.

It was her “modest” commentary on Victorian excess. She frequently entertained Henry James, during her decade there before she decamped to Paris in 1911.

The Mount, Edith Wharton’s “cottage”

Cheshire MA. Enjoying our Berkshires holiday. Williamstown, Lenox, Pittsfield, Dalton, …

Nice view of the Hoosic River and Ashuwillticook* Rail Trail from our rental in the Berkshires, and nice find on the shelf. (*”pleasant river between the hills”)