Eric Scheske
Encourage Urban Gardening
I have a client in Detroit who keeps a small stash of money at his son's house, along with a few guns, on the west side of Michigan, in a rural farming community.
The reason?
"When things collapse and Detroit erupts, I'll boogie out and
We Either Flee Devils or Fight Them
Toward the end of The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield tells himself he will move out West and shut himself off from everyone and everything, possibly by posing as a deaf-mute.
If he pretends to be a deaf-mute, he reasons, people would have to write messages to him on
The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy: A Micro-Review
If I had to come up with a list of books whose title makes the book sound far drier than it is, I'd nominate Gilson's The Spirit of Mediaeval Philosophy. Merton fans may recall that he bought the book in his pre-Catholic days, then nearly hurled
Cynar and Tonic
Peter Suderman at Cocktails with Suderman (Substack)
Disappearing Asparagus
Cindy Carcamo at L.A. Times
Knowledge Through Experience is Still Knowledge
Nassim Taleb's Assault on the Left Hemisphere's Pretensions: Samples
Magic in Everyday Renaissance Europe
Laura Miller at Slate
Black Magic and Scientism
Magic has fascinated me since I learned that the high watermark of magic was the Renaissance. The cutting-edge Renaissance thinkers were magicians. Magic and science were intertwined, its practitioners flitting between the two practices (arts) in their attempt to understand and, ultimately, control/manipulate the world, unaware that they are