August (s)newsletter!


Panorama atop Storm Castle


Well, it appears we have a standoff (Jack won; the gopher got bored after 3 minutes and moved on)


A very orange sunset • A shot Meghan took in September 2020, off the Western Promenade in Portland, Maine (unfiltered, unedited)


Precious — by every definition


Swimmy dog • A lot of buildup to the this moment


It can be difficult to interpret canine facial expressions, but me thinks Jack was not looking forward to the mile-long tunnel


Abstract Ort 🤓


Seamus Heaney:

[W]hatever the possibilities of achieving political harmony at an institutional level, I wanted to affirm that within our individual selves we can reconcile two orders of knowledge which we might call the practical and the poetic; to affirm also that each form of knowledge redresses the other and that the frontier between them is there for the crossing.

Put an image to that — the mental frontier as, say, a rocky mountain pass or meadow — and tell me it doesn’t meliorate a harsh, divided, unforgiving thought-life.


📚 Felice Benuzzi:

To be perfectly honest, there were occasions when the thought of our impending adventure made me frightened. Sometimes, returning late to my barrack on a cold and rainy night, I thought what it would be like lying out in the dark, wet forest; dead tired, exhausted by hunger, drenched to the bone, in imminent danger of being attacked by wild beasts. That prospect I compared with the warm blankets in my bunk, the familiar oil-lamp and the good book I was now preparing to read.

At such moments it was the thought of the security offered by a regular even though an unpleasant life, the spirit which dooms the canary bird to its caged existence, a natural tendency to follow the line of least resistance, that predominated.

On the other hand, standing in the ranks at morning roll call and seeing Batian beckoning me with its shimmering glaciers, I sometimes felt like running away on the spot, to seek and to meet adventure halfway.

We poor mortals are made like this, a mixture of contrasts, shade and light, fears and exaltations.