The Hammock Papers

A delicate fabric of bird song   Floats in the air, The smell of wet wild earth   Is everywhere. Red small leaves of the maple   Are clenche...

Katrin Lazar performs with the Barocksolisten München ...

Beaux, Half-Tide, Annisquam River , 1905 Never was a word more abused than "technique." To many "technique" means the pu...

Nathan Heller on paying attention to what matters ... “Attention as a category isn’t that salient for younger folks,” Jac Mullen, a writer ...

Somehow, I suspect that if Shakespeare were alive today, he might be a jazz fan himself—he’d appreciate the combination of spirit and inform...

Allan Bloom, speaking at DePauw University, September 11, 1987 ... These are the charmed years when you can, if you so choose, become anythi...

The unforeseen is the most beautiful gift life can give us. That is what we must think of multiplying in our domain. Art is inconceivable wi...

Mr. Wade lists the elements of a healthy temperament ... Courage and Kindness Patience and Urgency Range and Focus Feeling and Detachment C...

Alina Bercu performs with the Orchestra of the Liszt University, under the direction of Nicolás Pasquet ...

van Eyck, Man in a Red Turban , 1433 Steve has data on college regrets . I thoroughly enjoyed over twenty-five years in the food service ind...

Light’s hand is swift, its penmanship neat and precise. It jotted down a memo on this square of paper, then left it behind, a lost list of s...

Ari Weinzweig on Mother Trees ... Philosopher Francis Bacon once said, “Knowledge is power.” Deep knowledge, it seems reasonable to say the...

Yo-Yo Ma performs the Prelude ...

Hall, The Deluge , 1830 The Bodleian Map Room explores Edward Quin's 1830 atlas ... The beauty of Quin’s atlas comes from this sense of...

Thanks, Ann.

A woman I know says that to look at the Sleeping Bear late in the day is to feel the same emotion that comes when you listen to Beethoven’s ...

A rabbi was asked by one of his students “Why did God create atheists?” After a long pause, the rabbi finally responded with a soft but sinc...

An excellent album ...

As to the ham sandwiches, well they are the logical downfall of a generation that knows not herring .

Our great modern Republic. May those who seek the blessings of its institutions and the protection of its flag remember the obligations they...

You see, in The Syndics , Rembrandt is true to life, although even there he still goes into the higher — into the very highest — infinite....

Classical music is elitist? Argue for the Proms to be strictly classical and you’re likely to be told to lighten up. Yet one cannot fail to ...

Watkins-Pitchford, Brendon Chase , 1944  Denys Watkins-Pitchford's motto, taken from an old Cumbrian gravestone ... The wonder of the wo...

Viktoria Mullova performs the adagio with Music of the Baroque, directed by clangist Jonathan Cohen ...

Steve points to Matthew Crawford 's essay on AI's ability to alleviate the burden of thinking ... Mechanized judgment resembles lib...

I have lived the lives of Napoleon, Caesar, d’Artagnan. So I always encourage young people to read books, because it’s an ideal way to devel...

 Watkins-Pitchford,  Bluebells Flowered in the Clearings of the Big Wood , 1960 "I have come back once more to you all once more …"...

SHIP-MODEL KIT The lid of its box had a colorful picture of a four-masted clipper unzipping a blue ocean that had been loosely laid out, its...

An excellent album ...

Farewell, farewell! but this I tell To thee, thou Wedding-Guest! He prayeth well, who loveth well Both man and bird and beast. He prayeth be...

We are so concerned to flatter the majority that we lose sight of how very often it is necessary, in order to preserve freedom for the minor...

Cole, Clouds , 1838 SKY I should have begun with this: the sky. A window minus sill, frame, and panes. An aperture, nothing more, but wide o...

van Gogh, Self-Portrait , 1889 Everything in men and in their works that is truly good, and beautiful with an inner moral, spiritual and sub...

Víkingur Ólafsson performs his transcription ...

Taylor, William Shakespeare , 1611 Fall to them as you find your stomach serves you. No profit grows where is no pleasureta'en. In brief...

von Stägemann, Immanuel Kant , 1790 Enlightenment is man's release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is man's inability to m...

From PBS' American Masters series, The Incomparable Mr. Buckley ... A kind of poet.

Siouxsie released Tinderbox on this day in 1986. "Lands End" ...

Depeche Mode released Sounds of the Universe on this day in 2009. "Miles Away/The Truth Is" ...

Robert Smith was born on this day in 1959. "Play for Today" ...

Thanks, Kurt .