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Sports writer John Feinstein has died. I have only read a few of his books, but that is hardly damning as Feinstein was very prolific, and he wrote about just about every sport that’s out there. Not only was he a superb prose stylist, but he was especially gifted at translating the human stories of sport into words. He made you feel what it was like to be a ballplayer, or a basketball player, or a golfer, or whatever it was he chose to write about. I will miss his voice and I feel I should make it a bitDown the rabbit hole….

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There’s been some debate lately after last week’s NFL games, regarding whether or not it’s right, or good, for teams that have secured their playoff positions and who are thus facing a game that is essentially meaningless to not play their best players. The Kansas City Chiefs rested their starters, having already locked up the Number One seed in the AFC, and because they proceeded to lose to the Denver Broncos, who very much did have something to play for, the Broncos made the playoffs and the Cincinnati Bengals did not. (That the Bengals could have made the playoffs hadDown the rabbit hole….

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This is a repost from a couple of years ago. I chose to repost this, about a book by astronomer Sara Seager, because it has lodged in my brain since I read it. I generally try to avoid reading grief memoirs, for various reasons that mainly boil down to…well, I’ve had enough grief in my life already and I know that more is on the way someday*, and it’s a subject I don’t much enjoy plumbing any more than I have to. But sometimes I find a grief memoir that piques my interest and I read it anyway. Smallest LightsDown the rabbit hole….

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This is a repost that first appeared three years ago, on the old blog. I’m reposting it now, because of the season and because I’ve been thinking today, prompted by discussions elsewhere, about problematic people and what to do with their work. I also have the subject of food and memory on my mind, particularly this year, as this will be the first Christmas of my life without my mother’s “cheesy potatoes”, which are basically potatoes au gratin. Yes, I’ve looked around at some recipes, and yes, I’ve found some that sound good that will probably be pretty close. ButDown the rabbit hole….

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(image credit) I’m currently reading a book called All the Beauty in the World, by Patrick Bringley. The book is a memoir of Bringley’s tenure as a guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, a job he took in the wake of his older brother’s death from cancer. Not visiting the Met is the one regret I have from our trip to NYC in 2015, and a high priority next time we go. Maybe regret is too strong a word, as we weren’t in NYC long enough to do everything we’d have wanted to do. We were onlyDown the rabbit hole….

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From the archives: I don’t own this book yet. But I’ve had it checked out of the library a majority of the weeks it’s been in the collection, which means that it’s well past time for me to get off my ass and buy a copy, innit? Anyway, Jennifer Reese‘s Make the Bread, Buy the Butter (subtitled What You Should and Shouldn’t Cook From Scratch) is a terrific cookbook. Not just a collection of recipes, it’s a chronicle of one woman’s quest to take more of a do-it-yourself (DIY) approach to her family’s food preparation, and the discoveries she madeDown the rabbit hole….

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A literary anniversary went by last week, and I do want to mark its passing: on June 26, 1948, seventy-five years ago, The New Yorker published a new story by author Shirley Jackson. By this time Jackson was an established writer, albeit early on in her career, and her June, 1948 appearance in The New Yorker is the event that put her on the literary map, so to speak. And what an event that story’s publication was: that story became one of the most controversial ever published by that magazine, and to this day the story is a classic of the horrorDown the rabbit hole….

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This is a repost from a couple of years ago. I chose to repost this, about a book by astronomer Sara Seager, because it has lodged in my brain since I read it. I generally try to avoid reading grief memoirs, for various reasons that mainly boil down to…well, I’ve had enough grief in my life already and I know that more is on the way someday*, and it’s a subject I don’t much enjoy plumbing any more than I have to. But sometimes I find a grief memoir that piques my interest and I read it anyway. Smallest LightsDown the rabbit hole….

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I have just finished reading James Baldwin’s powerful essay-book No Name in the Street, in which Baldwin describes his early life and his encounters later with many figures, some seminal and some less-so, and how he relates all of this to his larger experience as a Black man in 20th century America. It does not come as a surprise to observe how many of his observations can be, and are being by others, advanced as true to this very day. For all that we, for certain definitions of “we”, like to pat ourselves on the back for how far we’ve come,Down the rabbit hole….

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I’m currently reading Ursula K. Le Guin’s classic sci-fi novel The Left Hand of Darkness, and while I rarely quote books while I’m reading them, this one passage hit me between the eyes. The story involves a planet that’s divided into two countries, and our two protagonists–one a planetary native, one an off-world visitor–are on the run in one of the two countries (“Orgoreyn”) and are trying to cross great distance to return to the other. This exchange takes place, with the first line spoken by the off-world visitor who is a stranger to these countries: “You hate Orgoreyn, don’t you?”Down the rabbit hole….