The leaves have been falling so swiftly, I find this song going through my head on loop this week (and if you are a fan of 70’s sci-fi rock opera, I highly recommend the War of the Worlds version that it comes from. So good in a 70s space-glam-rock way…).
, who in addition to her brilliant books Down Girl and Entitled, writes at her substack, where she wrote a powerful, necessary essay on what happens when we are conditioned to not trust our own bodies.“I wanted to have kids, I just wanted people to talk honestly, to me, about what it meant. Maybe what I wanted everyone to say instead of you’ll nail it, is, good luck. I love you. This might be the last thing you ever do.” A stunning essay by Jane Dykema that ponders what if men could get pregnant, and the loneliness of being on the threshold of birth and death.
“The future is low tech.” A twenty-five-year experimental archaeology project to build a 13th-century castle in France with only the tools of that century.
“Once the paper is removed, you can hold it in your hands, fold it into quarters, and read it on your porch on a sunny afternoon accompanied by your favorite cup of coffee, cigarette, or can of beer.” A newspaper that you can only read on paper, never the internet.
“A recent surge in interest in magic and the occult inside and outside academia lies at the heart of the most urgent questions of our society. Decolonisation, the exploration of alternative epistemologies, feminism, and anti-racism are at the core of this programme.” University of Exeter has a new interdisciplinary graduate degree in magic.
A “new” Artemesia Gentileschi painting has been recovered from the dust at Hampton Court.
, who writes the substack, wrote a beautiful essay on wonder this week, with a poem I haven’t stopped thinking about:
Thank you so much, Freya!
What a lovely collection, Freya. I listened to Forever Autumn. I read Kate Manne’s excellent essay. I came over all nostalgic about Guedelon, which I visited in 2016. I admired the Gentileschi, I was fascinated by her at university, where I noticed the difference between her Susanna or Salomé and her contemporary (male) artists’. And I look forward to your other offerings over the weekend. Thank you.