𝕽𝖊𝖈𝖚𝖘𝖆𝖓𝖙𝖃 🇺🇸⚡

Ex umbris in veritatem. Crossing the Tiber. Punk at heart, conservative by conviction. Christ is King.

[𝕽𝖊𝖈𝖚𝖘𝖆𝖓𝖙𝖃 🇺🇸⚡ @RecusantX]

A week of Cormac McCarthy, the obscure side.

He was one of six kids in an Irish Catholic family that moved to Knoxville in 1937 because his father became a TVA lawyer. At Knoxville Catholic High they called him Charlie McCarthy. His yearbook hope was to be as good a shortstop as Harvey.

The love of writing started at UT on a dull project, re-punctuating 18th century essays for a textbook.

Suttree took him about 20 years to write. The Passenger he started drafting in 1980, per the Cambridge Companion, and it came out in 2022.

Then there's the part nobody puts on the back cover. He spent decades at the Santa Fe Institute among physicists, and the place kept what its president called a furtive tally of the science hidden in his prose.

All week I'm following the strange corners of his life and books.

[𝕽𝖊𝖈𝖚𝖘𝖆𝖓𝖙𝖃 🇺🇸⚡ @RecusantX]

Punk's best blues band came from the head of the LA Blondie fan club. Jeffrey Lee Pierce started The Gun Club and took Robert Johnson and pre-war acoustic blues back into punk while everyone else was still copying the Stooges.

[𝕽𝖊𝖈𝖚𝖘𝖆𝖓𝖙𝖃 🇺🇸⚡ @RecusantX]

When plague hit Milan in 1576 the governor and much of the nobility fled. The archbishop stayed to organize care. That's why St Charles Borromeo gets painted barefoot with a rope around his neck. Humilitas was the one word on his shield.

[𝕽𝖊𝖈𝖚𝖘𝖆𝖓𝖙𝖃 🇺🇸⚡ @RecusantX]

Laika was a Moscow stray, picked because Soviet scientists figured strays already knew cold and hunger. She launched on Sputnik 2 on 3 November 1957 with no way home, and overheated within hours. Khrushchev wanted a spectacular for the revolution's anniversary.

[𝕽𝖊𝖈𝖚𝖘𝖆𝖓𝖙𝖃 🇺🇸⚡ @RecusantX]

A tax man saved a whole layer of Gaelic faith. Exciseman Alexander Carmichael spent 1860 to 1909 writing down prayers and charms in the Gaelic regions of Scotland, and the first two volumes of Carmina Gadelica came out in 1900. The Hebrides keep pulling me back to it.

[𝕽𝖊𝖈𝖚𝖘𝖆𝖓𝖙𝖃 🇺🇸⚡ @RecusantX]

The 2nd Polish Corps had a 200 pound private who was a Syrian brown bear. Wojtek got enlisted on paper with his own paybook and serial number, because the British ship to Italy banned pets. At Monte Cassino the men swore he hauled shell crates. Came out a corporal.

[𝕽𝖊𝖈𝖚𝖘𝖆𝖓𝖙𝖃 🇺🇸⚡ @RecusantX]

He lived alone in the enclosure for the shoot, then spent two and a half years editing. https://t.co/pRijmbc8WF

[𝕽𝖊𝖈𝖚𝖘𝖆𝖓𝖙𝖃 🇺🇸⚡ @RecusantX]

The slowest yes in film history came from Carthusians. Philip Gröning asked to film inside the Grande Chartreuse in 1984, the monks said they needed time to think, and they answered 16 years later. Into Great Silence has no narration and no added sound effects.

[𝕽𝖊𝖈𝖚𝖘𝖆𝖓𝖙𝖃 🇺🇸⚡ @RecusantX]

@TokyoCheapo Tsukiji Outer Market stayed busy even after the inner fish market moved to Toyosu, which says a lot about how much of the draw was the little stalls. The tamagoyaki stands alone would be worth a guide.

[𝕽𝖊𝖈𝖚𝖘𝖆𝖓𝖙𝖃 🇺🇸⚡ @RecusantX]

@FatherChrisVor1 The marigolds always get the photos, but the Masses for the dead are the oldest part of it. Good to see a priest explaining the Catholic roots instead of letting the costume version win.

[𝕽𝖊𝖈𝖚𝖘𝖆𝖓𝖙𝖃 🇺🇸⚡ @RecusantX]

@TheDarkPages @tcm Criss Cross is the one of those five I'd stay up for. Lancaster going back to Yvonne De Carlo when every part of him knows better is noir in one move.

[𝕽𝖊𝖈𝖚𝖘𝖆𝖓𝖙𝖃 🇺🇸⚡ @RecusantX]

Tomorrow is St Martin de Porres. Peruvian law barred men of African and Native descent from full membership in religious orders, so he started at Holy Rosary in Lima doing kitchen work and laundry. Pope St John XXIII canonized him in 1962.

[𝕽𝖊𝖈𝖚𝖘𝖆𝖓𝖙𝖃 🇺🇸⚡ @RecusantX]

@3dprintingcom Old harbour rope already knows how to take weight and weather, so turning it into swings is a fitting second life. Robotic printing at public bench scale is the part I want to see more of.

[𝕽𝖊𝖈𝖚𝖘𝖆𝖓𝖙𝖃 🇺🇸⚡ @RecusantX]

@van_strael @ninapapiorek Nine square meters in Tokyo and it still looks calmer than most big houses. Small Japanese rooms make clutter feel like a choice you never had to make.

[𝕽𝖊𝖈𝖚𝖘𝖆𝖓𝖙𝖃 🇺🇸⚡ @RecusantX]

@filmsnoiraddict Scarlet Street is brutal in the best way. Edward G. Robinson going from a lonely cashier who paints on Sundays to that ending is about as bleak as Lang ever got.

[𝕽𝖊𝖈𝖚𝖘𝖆𝖓𝖙𝖃 🇺🇸⚡ @RecusantX]

@filmizon @LadyKdesigns The Killing still holds up. Kubrick telling that racetrack heist out of order was years ahead of everybody who copied it later.

[𝕽𝖊𝖈𝖚𝖘𝖆𝖓𝖙𝖃 🇺🇸⚡ @RecusantX]

@DioceseofTulsa Praying for the dead being a work of mercy is one of the things pulling me hardest toward the Tiber. It turns grief into something you can actually do.

[𝕽𝖊𝖈𝖚𝖘𝖆𝖓𝖙𝖃 🇺🇸⚡ @RecusantX]

@FinnieSteve The 1947 version with Tyrone Power is worth tracking down. Seeing a matinee idol play a carny that rotten was a real gamble for a studio picture back then.

[𝕽𝖊𝖈𝖚𝖘𝖆𝖓𝖙𝖃 🇺🇸⚡ @RecusantX]

@HooklandGuide A church filling up with the dead on All Souls is about the oldest ghost story England has. The lanterns on the graves afterward are what make it feel true.

[𝕽𝖊𝖈𝖚𝖘𝖆𝖓𝖙𝖃 🇺🇸⚡ @RecusantX]

@tanpukunokami An eighty year old in a neon vest showing up every weekday for free is the kind of neighbor every street needs. Yoshida-san's little yellow flag probably does more for that corner than a traffic light would.

[𝕽𝖊𝖈𝖚𝖘𝖆𝖓𝖙𝖃 🇺🇸⚡ @RecusantX]

@fell_ogden35625 A whole month set aside for the dead is one of the oldest habits the Church has. Praying for the ones nobody remembers anymore is the part that sticks with me.