How Civilizations Die
The Provost of @RalstonCollege David Butterfield—an astoundingly talented and courageous man—with @KonstantinKisin and @francisjfoster on the @triggerpod. A bracing conversation on the essential, indeed existential, question of our time.
https://t.co/aQNHRreXY0
This is my kind of temple.
Ἀναβαίνει καταρρέον
Καταρρέει ἀναβαίνον
ζῶν μεν τὴν παράδοσιν
θνῆσκὸν δε τὴν ἄνοδον
Rushing down, it rises
Rising, it rushes down
Living the giving-over
Dying the climbing-up
Arethusa waterfall
White Mountain National Forest, NH
But it does not leave me unscathed. How does one bear it, our cosmic pile of holy shit? Beautiful beyond measure, terrible beyond time. How to bend and not break, how to rage and not burn, these are the questions, the pleas in my heart in the hungering dark.
I haven't found public words yet for the fury in me this week, for the anger of my life and labor and liberty being played yet again like a goddamn piano key.
I know it's always been thus. Good men, good women, good humans, trying to be mutually, beneficially human together get plowed down & plundered by the least imaginative of our species - those who think there's anything to win by believing we're enemies when I am you & you are me.
It could be me
Tomorrow
Who dies
For any reason
With a cold sore
A fever and greasy hair
And what would I be?
Another girl in your pocket
Whose name you don't know
Can't get the infection
From so far away
Or you'd care
Nevermind
Life goes on
So does war
#writingtosurvive
Ralston does not seek to invent the novel and the unknown. Instead, we are committed to reviving the age-old principles of humanities education. Here Joseph Conlon, Professor of Greek, explains to our students how our panigiri festival channels those aims. (Filmed by @ManolidouE)
Yes! Films and plays used to epitomize exactly this kind of intimacy, this chemistry of the mind and body. Perhaps that's why they still ring true today. I'm currently in rehearsals for Private Lives by Noël Coward and the banter is delicious. God save us from lukewarm scripts.
Intellectual intimacy is top tier but unfortunately such a rare find. Deep conversations, opinions, debates, humour, banter, connecting on a deeper level hits way harder than just on a surface level