A few brief notes:

You’re seeing more posts about movies these days because I have a couple of long-term projects in mind that concern cinematic art, especially things made in the middle third of the 20th century. I am having a lot of fun watching!  

Related: Remember to explore this blog using the tags, like this one: #movies. Also, a couple of years ago I wrote a summary of this blog’s chief themes with links to the most important tags: see that here. 

I use micro.blog almost exclusively for two things: photos and a record of the books I’m reading. (I love micro.blog and would post there exclusively except that I have fifteen years of tagged posts here.) If you’re interested in those little things, you can subscribe to a weekly digest of my posts here — though you should know that while I am an enthusiastic photographer I am not a skilled one. The digest goes out every Friday afternoon. 

It still feels very weird to me to offer the opportunity to support this blog financially via Buy Me a Coffee (see the link above). But I’m doing it, because I really like writing here and feel that I can genuinely explore ideas in ways not easily done in other media, and I need to make my writing here financially defensible if I possibly can. Recently I added the possibility of monthly or annual memberships — which feels even weirder, but … I am so grateful for any and all support.  

My Laity Lodge retreat with Sara Hendren filled up in 24 hours! My regrets to those who wanted to but could not register — maybe there will be a second edition at some point in the future. 

Adam Roberts’s translation of the Lord of the Rings rhyme into Latin is fun. I think the line “In terra Mordoris tenebrosissima” is especially melodious. I’m going around the house chanting it under my breath. 

I think my three recent posts on neighborliness — one and two and three — add up to something, though I’m not wholly sure just what. 

I had cause today to remember that of all the essays I have published — more than a hundred now, I guess — the one that best encapsulates what I believe and what I care about is this one: “Filth Therapy.”