Brad Craft

Another hero: conductor Robert Shaw of the famous Chorale.

“Our illusions have no limits; we taste a thousand times the bitterness of the chalice and, nevertheless, we return to bring our lips to its edge.”

How rude to speculate about if they are a couple! That is just NONE of our business people! I DO think we have every right to ask if Rafael keeps the brace on when they’re fucking? But other than that, please let’s give these men some privacy, you nosy buggers.

Author rebecca.romney Rebecca Romney is bookwoman and dealer in rare and beautiful things. Here she has taken up with women writers I really love, like Inchbald and Lennox. From @scribnerbooks Jane Austen’s Bookshelf: A Rare Book Collector’s Quest to Find the Women Writers Who Shaped a Legend.

I thought I’d recommend A Parish Chronicle, by Halldor Laxness. And unlike my recent Laxness favorite, Salk Valka, which was a big bruiser, I thought the little story of an old church disappearing and reappearing might be just the thing. @archipelagobooks.bsky.social

Always keep at least one epistolary masterpiece in your purse

Watched Richard Linklater’s Blue Moon last night and, no, it was not good. Can we still not tell true queer stories without a lady to love?! What YEAR is this?!

Someone yesterday asked me for a novel about resistance. Here is a great one. Hans Fallada based his novel on a real couple quietly working to undermine Hitler from within Germany. Translated by Michael Hoffmann and published in paperback by Melville House. In arte spes est, in art is hope.

Thin as the lines he drew

My doctor has written me a new prescription for filth. (Cholestyramine.) I did message my physician to say I look forward to receiving my laudanum drops, tincture of mercury, and potash and houndstooth lozenges as evidently my mail-order pharmacy is Gower’s Drugstore in Bedford Falls.

Real personal hero: science writer Martin Gardner (1914 - 2010.)

The literary convention in nonfiction that our ineradicable American racism requires an arising incident rather than just using any excuse is making my old ass very tired.

My three favorite letter writers: William Cowper, Charles Lamb, Edward Fitzgerald. Could I really someday live without owning books of all their letters? (Weird bibliophile problems.)

This is Sandra. The name is sewn right at the neck. That’s how I know. She was one of mother’s capes that I adopted. I see you my Trans Brothers and Sisters. Stay brave. Be daring. We are with you, indivisible. The memory of my sweet, accepting Stella watch over you in your struggle.

Sweet suffering Jeebus please make this vulgar, hideous 💩 stop.

It’s the recipe from the side of the Hershey’s tin

Favorite Grammy moments so far: our girls Olivia Dean and Lola Young — and who would have guessed I’d be mesmerized by Justin Beiber in shiny boxing shorts? But bar none, “Ice Out” — Bad Bunny. @grammys #badbunny #iceout @#justinebeiber @lolayounggg @oliviadeano

Found myself watching the happy attendees interviewed as they left Melanoma. Whatever your thoughts on The Slovenian Mattress, watching folks who clearly haven’t been to a movie theater since Burt Reynolds passed? You’d have thought their employers might have at least varied the tag-lines.

Fighting fire with fire, maybe? On this gloomy morning in these gloomy times… Laszlo Krasznahorkai nonfiction in rural china! From @seagullbooks and translator @ottiliemulzet Ottilie Mulzet, Destruction and Sorrow beneath the Heavens #nobelprize #bookstagram #laszlokrasznahorkai #nonfiction

One of my favorites from last year, Exophony: Voyages Outside the Mother Tongue, by Yoko Tawada.

From Montaigne’s essay, On Cruelty: “Every death should correspond with its life. We do not become different for dying. I always interpret the death by the life.” Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good, Keith Porter Jr., think of all the people who have died in ICE operations and custody.

7up pound cake from scratch fills the house with sweet smells and he hasn’t even glazed it yet.

We went to this one today and enjoyed it enormously — not just because Timothée Chalamet Got Spanked With a Real Ping Pong Paddle. (His tiny bum is the size of an acorn, poor, wee, sweetie.) so many cameos and guest bits too! And Paltrow was lovely.

Reading for my “weekend”

So I did a thing. Porn with a very long intro. I get it now.

Purse Dick

Electrocardiography fun fact: who knew that thanks to my ridiculously overaccented and somewhat meaningless diagnosis of Ménière's twenty years ago, the scariest part of even the simplest medical procedure would eventually be, “I need you to lie flat and tilt your head back.” Nope. No. Bad idea.

Living room

Oopsy! Quick reminder if anyone hasn’t or needs a refresher: On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, by @thetimothysnyder Timothy Snyder, $14.00, from @crownpublishing #ice #ontyranny