“Bookstores, like libraries, are the physical manifestation of the wide world’s longest, most thrilling conversation.”
— Richard Russo
Philip Jenkins: “As an intact book from this era, the Faddan More Psalter is an amazing enough find in its own right. Even so, its story became even stranger in 2010, when archaeologists reported finding eighth century Egyptian papyrus in its cover. One remarks that ‘The cover could have had several lives before it ended up basically as a folder for the manuscript in the bog. … It could have traveled from a library somewhere in Egypt to the Holy Land or to Constantinople or Rome and then to Ireland.”
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sjl11bWVJhw?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1&origin=http://safe.txmblr.com&wmode=opaque&w=250&h=141]
The Library: A Film
And grossly inaccurate. But, you know, never mind.
I am one of those who believe that a human being is not an autonomous construction with no given structure, order, status, or role. I believe that the affirmation of freedom does not imply the negation of limits and that the affirmation of equality does not imply the leveling of differences. I believe that the powers of technology and of the imagination do not require that we forget that being is a gift, that life is prior to all of us, and that it has its own laws.I long for a society in which modernity would have its full place but without implying the denial of elementary principles of human and familial ecology; for a society in which the diversity of ways of being, of living, and of desiring is accepted as fortunate, without allowing this diversity to be diluted in the reduction to the lowest common denominator, which effaces all differentiation; for a society in which, despite the technological deployment of virtual realities and the free play of critical intelligence, the simplest words—father, mother, spouse, parents—retain their meaning, at once symbolic and embodied; for a society in which children are welcomed and find their place, their whole place, without becoming objects that must be possessed at all costs, or pawns in a power struggle.
Amazing photos of coral reef life by Felix Salazar — please click through for the rest
A society which disregards those who are weak and non-productive risks exaggerating the development of reason, organization, aggression and the desire to dominate.It becomes a society without heart, without kindness — a rational and sad society, lacking celebration, divided within itself and given to competition, rivalry and, finally violence.” ~Jean Vanier from Man and Woman, God Made Them Hear more of Jean Vanier in The Wisdom of Tenderness Photo by Craig Allen / Flickr, cc by nc-nd-2.0