From Kathryn Hughes:

A cat’s meat man was an itinerant vendor who pushed a cart of cheap offal and horsemeat around residential streets while calling out something that sounded like “CA-DOE-MEE!”[…]

Although there were plenty of grim jokes circulating about how cat’s meat men supplied the toughest meat they could get away with, the fact was that many of these rough diamonds were known for their tender hearts. It was not unusual to spot a cat’s meat man slipping scraps to the hopeful strays that wound around his ankles. He was their guardian, their special friend.

A lovely, especially tender photo up close.

Paul Kingsnorth:

The notion of “Christian fiction” is problematic in the same fashion as the notion of a “protest song”. Consider: how many good protest songs have you actually ever heard, in comparison with the number of bad or terrible ones? I would be willing to bet that the latter list was a lot longer, and the reason is simple enough: polemic and poetry don’t mix. Making a point or pushing an agenda sits very badly with the task of exploring the complexity of human being in all its fullness. Somebody who already has all the answers may be unwilling to dig very deeply into the pushes and pulls of the human soul. There may also be places they don’t want to go, or consider themselves banned from exploring.[…]

And so we come to Fredrick Buechner.

My niece pointed out an Eastern Bluebird on the perch

Excellent conversation between Francis Fukuyama and Jonah Goldberg on the Remant podcast. Finally something — both substantively and tonally — that I can share with my political, uh… antagonists.

For comparison: I’m a longtime listener of the Dangerous Dogma podcast, and I tried listening earlier this week to Brain Kaylor’s interview with Paul Raushenbush. And, even though I mostly agree with them, I just found it — again, tonally and substantively — unbearable to listen to.

I think one of the primary lessons that we still collectively refuse to learn is that if we can’t cross party lines, can’t bring ourselves to even want to speak intelligibly or listen empathically across those lines, then things will only get worse. And, you can only do this yourself; you cannot make anyone else do it.

It’s one thing to post, share, or even scream into the void. I do a fair amount of that myself. It’s another thing — and I believe a much worse thing — to post, share, and scream continually if not exclusively into a crowd of clapping hands.

So I’m sure my extreme dehydration for shareable things is playing a big part here, but I do think this Remnant interview was just a good conversation on the merits. I’m not saying there’s anything groundbreaking here. It was just nice to feel like I was listening to a politics conversation that had the possibility to go beyond itself.

Related to this post about Oakeshott and the artist’s “emotional and intellectual integrity and insight” — both adding to it and complicating it — is this excerpt from Jeremy Eichler.

Nemo canum est qui mundum non reddat meliorem

I plan to keep all “politics” on the Wordpress blog going forward, but just in case you missed this New Yorker cover… It may be the best one they’ve ever had.

In my own mental space, the alphabet spans a banner at least 10 feet wide. But seeing the entire thing easily written out on one line as a title to a Billy Collins poem — not so much. Yet still “combines into all the [English] words we know.”

Juuust one, only one.

Damariscotta North and Damariscotta South