Micah Nathan published a thoughtful piece in The Guardian about experiences teaching MIT students creative writing . The students were not humanities scholars or creative writers; they were at MIT to…

$89,900 - This is an old Victorian Mansion built in 1900 in the Queen Anne style. This house has all the original quarter sawn oak woodwork. It includes all the tall baseboards and 3 pocket ... Read…

$149,900 - This turn of the 19th century home is waiting for you to restore it to its original glory. Known as the Wimberly - Eckhardt House in the early 1900s, it hosted many events ... Read more

Death, perhaps more than any other event in our circle of life, has plenty of strange and bizarre rituals associated with it. It's no surprise, all religions see it as a gateway of some form, leaving…

Bob Trubshaw is our guide. He says in his YouTube blurb: As with all areas of Britain there are certain wells in Leicestershire and Rutland known as "holy wells" and several dedicated to saints.…

ronenv-post:James Halier Gardiner was imprisoned in solitary confinement for 5 years. In that time, he wrote 9 books (5 nonfiction, and 4 novels) committed to memory. His first 10 days out were spent…

May 13, 1932. This is the day Charles Chaplin, the King of Comedy who brought laughter to the world, first ste […]

I learned a couple of new words from this fascinating “interactive” NY Times article by Abraham Z. Cooper, a pulmonary and critical care physician and associate professor of medicine…

Translated from french (please notify us of errors) Roman women and men wore bright colours and always found some moralist ready to reproach them for it. Martial sketches the austere man who “likes…

Homer, Odyssey 22.226-230 (Athena speaking; tr. A.T. Murray): Odysseus, no longer hast thou steadfast might nor any valor, such as was thine when for high-born Helen of the white arms thou didst for…

Sardis stepped terraces are revealing how Lydian builders transformed a rugged hillside capital into a planned royal city long before Croesus became a symbol of legendary wealth. A new study by Güzin…

Read the full post at - A Happy Death by Albert Camus A Happy Death by Albert Camus is essentially a prequel to The Stranger — and it's best understood that way.

She documented a vanishing New Mexico community few ever saw. This interview is about how Lynn Adler spent time in a small village called Petaca and photographed everyday life before it changed.…

At the Legnano Historical Literature Festival, Italian author Stefania Auci reflected on L’alba dei leoni, the latest chapter in the Florio saga, exploring the real history behind The Lions of Sicily…

In brief How do you write about immigrants, surveillance, and data literacy at a time when the political landscape around you is constantly shifting, immigrants are being targeted, and higher…

I’ve mentioned this a lot to my writers group over the years, so I thought I’d finally write it down. English carries two parallel vocabularies: [...] The post Basic Saxon vs Latinate Construction…

This morning I was watching Gordon White’s tribute to the recently-departed Peter Carroll. I’ve never read any of Carroll’s books and I doubt I ever will. I was watching for the…

A post here last month explored the philosophical connection between Richard Hughes , author of the 1929 best seller "A High Wind in Jamaica," and Hugh Everett III , born in 1930 and famous for his…

What is an archive? What is an archival collection? What do archivists do? Unless you’ve spent some quality time in reading rooms, these ideas might feel a bit vague and nebulous. But we would never…

By Aylin Malcolm and Margaret C. Maurer Penn MS Codex 251 is a slim eighteenth-century recipe book with a distinctive binding made of thick, durable paper. The binding’s exterior is red with a…

With this post we have left behind the halfway mark on our journey around the Great Wheel of the lunar phases, the primary symbol of Yeats’s symbolic system. The soul making this journey—your soul,…

Paul wouldn’t order Christians to wear spiritual armor if there wasn’t an desperate need to do so—that they may stand against an invisible enemy in a deadly invisible war. But he also…

The modern church has reduced the Bible to little more than a self-help book—but nothing could be further from the truth. David understood this and mapped it out for us—even more, Paul understood…

Last week, a professor of English claimed that Satan’s fall to Earth in Dante’s Inferno was an accurate description of a meteor strike on the planet. Timothy Burbery of Marshall…

I grew up hearing this phrase. Forgive others. Forgive your brothers and sisters. Ask God for forgiveness. All that stuff. It was starting to sound cliche. I thought it was just some moral thing put…

Abstract: Graham Priest’s simple three-valued logic LP has many curious properties. It has the same valid formulas as classical logic, but differs from classical logic when it comes to valid…

From Mad Jack Mytton setting himself on fire to cure hiccups, to the Duke who built 15 miles of underground tunnels to avoid people, meet the most gloriously strange figures in British history.

One of the most popular Japanese-learning apps teaches 夜 (night) with this mnemonic, literally: "You call your friend at night and say 'Yo, Lou (よる)!'" Pronunciation yes. The kanji,…

According to Paul Valéry, no great power in modern times has been able to hold on to its conquests for more than fifty years. Should this be true, Russia’s day of judgment will come in the 1990s. Yet…

If a man is sending you mixed signals, what should you do? What is God saying about this?  In this article, I will give you some possible answers God could be sending a woman when she is confused…

Xenophon, Apology of Socrates 6 (tr. O.J. Todd): But now, if my years are prolonged, I know that the frailties of old age will inevitably be realized, that my vision must be less perfect and my…

Henry III wanted another son. His first son, Edward, was followed by a daughter, Margaret, and Henry needed at least "an heir and a spare." So he prayed to the 9th-century East Anglian king Edmund…

“Never did I think I’d become a pastor.” If ever there was a statement that comes up in conversation when speaking of my calling and career, it’s this one. Because the…

In today’s Bollettino there is “Declaration” from the one named as Prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. Statement by His Eminence Cardinal Víctor Manuel…

I've just been tipped off by Allie Nickell on BlueSky that I've been mentioned in a BBC radio documentary about spiritualism in Belfast. I was in touch with a journo a few months back, and gave him a…

And now we come to the naval climax of the war, the greatest of all sea battles: Leyte Gulf. This chapter is jam-packed, and as such, Morison keeps the strategy section fairly short, and with only…

The Western World Exists Only as an Image of What It Once Was Paul Craig Roberts British prime minister Starmer […]

MJC games were invented by British Merchant Navy prisoners in a German POW camp during the Second World War to boost morale. The Marine Jockey Commission later turned their creations into popular…

I've just discovered that the Medical Officer of Health Reports for Scotland from 1891, previously available on the now defunct ScotlandsPlaces platform, are in fact available on ScotlandsPeople.…

I recently came across photos of Sarah Paulson’s 2026 Met Gala outfit featuring a $1 bill covering her eyes and thought, “Oh, that tired trope.” Paulson’s outfit reminded me that I rolled my eyes…

A Weekly Poem from 13th Century Iran

Having set out their respective criticisms of each other, the Barthian and the Schleiermacherian, how am I proposing that they should reconcile and kiss? I would hope that the point is easily made.…

Among the rich tapestry of Japanese folklore, stories featuring a head priest (Osho) and a young acolyte (Kozo […]

No, this is not about the take over of the Church by “walking together” ideology propagandists. This is about the Dedication of the Pantheon in Rome as a church in 609. Dear readers, this…

Seems my memory [ of whc fallibility prev ] told a fibby-whopper about my reading matter 50 years ago. In 2022, I maintained that I had been reading an Elizabethan translation of Isidore of Seville's…

[more...] Username Password * Remember Me     Forgot Password

Austin Dobson in A Bookman’s Budget (1917) claims the longest sentence ever written in English can be found in William Hazlitt’s Spirit of the Age; Or Contemporary Portraits (1825), in the essay…

A first grader out on a field trip with his class discovered a medieval sword in Gran, Norway. Six-year-old Henrik Refsnes Mørtvedt saw a rusty piece of metal sticking out of the ground and with the…

The Waqf (Amendment) Bill 2024 led to several controversies, protests and violent eruptions. The leaders of All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) claimed, “The Muslim community views…