Small traditional pub co giving voice to diverse authors; @calvinhelin @randahandler @isabelleAvadon Claire April @ravencrestPub, Dr.Naji Abumrad, Beverly Neals
Connecting young people to digital networks serves no purpose if they remain disconnected from themselves, others, and their own interiority. We must help young people rediscover silence, reflection, the ability to ask questions, the depth of relationships, and openness to transcendence. To listen to the soul, we must lend an ear, because the soul's voice is not a shout, but a whisper.
An appropriate birthday present on my uncle's birthday today. A federal judge ruled that President Trump and the Kennedy Center Board acted unlawfully in renaming the Kennedy Center. The judge held that only Congress can change the Center's name and blocked the planned two-year closure. I know they'll probably appeal and the story isn't over, but for today let’s celebrate a great birthday gift.
'This nice and subtle happiness of reading, this joy not chilled by age, this politie and unpunished vice, this selfish, serene life-long intoxication'
Logan Pearsall Smith
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“Read books. Travel when you can. Learn how to cook one meal exceptionally well. Sit in old bars and talk to strangers. Wear your best jacket to dinner. Appreciate good wine, good music, and good conversation. Do the right thing, even when no one is watching. Set the example for younger men who are watching you. Call your parents. Take long walks. Leave your phone behind sometimes. Become the kind of man people feel better after being around. Life is short, so live it well.”
-J.B. Lloyd
Research data from 160,000 adults in 31 countries concludes that a sizeable home library gave teens skills equivalent to university graduates.
Build a home library.
While Dexter has been home recovering from a successful bionic elbow surgery in Milan, Italy . . . he won a book award! That dog is unstoppable! #kidlit#bookawards#dexterdogouray
The modern state highway from Rome to Brindisi still broadly follows the same geographic corridor as a road the ancient Romans began building more than 2,300 years ago.
And it's not a coincidence...
A 2023 study in the Journal of Regional Science found that modern Italian motorways and railways still largely trace the paths of the old consular roads. The Roman network, the authors write, became "the foundational physical capital" of Italy's current transport system.
That network began with a single road.
It's called Appian Way. The poet Statius called it regina viarum — the queen of roads.
Construction began as a military project during the Samnite Wars to connect Rome to Capua. Over the next century, as Rome pushed south, the road kept extending with it, until it reached Brindisi on the heel of Italy — roughly 540 kilometers of stone.
The engineering behind it is extraordinary. Deep foundations of cemented rubble. A surface of polygonal blocks of volcanic basalt, cut and fitted so tightly the historian Procopius later wrote they looked "grown together rather than set by hand."
The stretch closest to Rome — the old Appian Way — is a free public park. The original stones are still there — the same ones walked by Roman legions and medieval pilgrims. Cars still use the first few kilometers and after that, the road belongs to whoever wants to walk it.
Much of what shaped the ancient world moved along the Appian Way...
In 71 BC, after Crassus defeated Spartacus, six thousand of his followers were crucified along a nearly two-hundred-kilometer stretch of it as a warning.
The Apostle Paul was brought into Rome as a prisoner on this road. And, according to tradition, Saint Peter walked it the other way, fleeing Nero's persecution.
If you want to learn more about one of the oldest and most important of the great ancient roads — and about five other wonders built by the Romans — you can check out today's article here: https://t.co/D7rHT1wCyd
It's a 5-minute read, and the engineering details alone are worth it.
And if you enjoy this kind of deep dive into history, follow and subscribe — there's a new one every week.
Bill Maher asks how the government is “failing the poor so badly” when he pays “60 PERCENT” of his earnings in taxes.
“Last week was tax day… I paid the government probably almost 60% of what I earn. That’s a lot.”
“And I… wouldn’t mind if Bernie Sanders would stop saying the rich don’t pay taxes.”
“The top 10% pay 72% of all federal income taxes. And the bottom half, 3%.”
“The Democratic Socialists talk about socialism like we don’t already have a lot: Social Security, unemployment, Medicare, nutritional assistance, Medicaid, Obamacare, disability, housing subsidies.”
“How can you be soaking the rich and failing the poor so badly? How can it be that the federal government alone took in over 5 trillion in taxes last year, and we still need that?”
“Are we really this incompetent and corrupt?”
What Books Press seeks submissions through April 30! Send in poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and hybrid manuscripts that thrill the editors “with a bending of literary expectation, or a striking use of form, or a poignant portrayal of the human condition.” https://t.co/mvQwBGzL8V
Helle Helle on the @GrantaMag podcast:
"Writing... I don't know what it is. Maybe that is why it works. If you know too much, it doesn't work. That's my experience."
https://t.co/liRRUgkDAX