Christmas, Thomas Merton, type design
Merry Christmas, everybody! Christmas is of course a season, rather than a day, and we’re only a quarter of the way through that season, so to get us started, here are a few posts from my blog (images and quotes) on Christmas themes:
- G. K. Chesterton, “Christmas Poem”
- David Jones, “Nativity”
- David Jones, “Nativity with Beasts and Shepherds”
- Les Murray, “Animal Nativity”
And, best of all,
I have an essay about Thomas Merton, on the fiftieth anniversary of his death, at the New Yorker’s website.
Jesse Ragan is a type designer who has been studying the work of Rudolph Ruzicka — and completing a typeface Ruzicka never finished.
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Feeling a need to slow down? Try the Very Slow Movie Player, which displays films at 24 frames per ... hour.
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Adam Scovell looks for Scrooge’s counting-house.
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Two thousand eight hundred years ago, Rahim son of Shadadan wrote an incantation, in Aramaic, to bind the devourer.
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The more radical people’s views, the worse they are at understanding when they’re wrong.
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“The moment I found out Trump could tweet himself was comparable to the moment in ‘Jurassic Park’ when Dr Grant realised that velociraptors could open doors. I was like, ‘Oh, no.’”
I am disappointed and angry about the closure of The Weekly Standard — David Brooks’s column on the subject basically speaks for me — and while the site is still up I want to link to some reviews I published there this year:
- A reflection on a fine book about soccer and why I love the game so much
- Some thoughts, not altogether admiring, on an oral history of Silicon Valley
- An enthusiastic commendation of what may well be the most important book I read this year, Andrew Delbanco’s history of the fugitive slave laws and their impact on American society
- And three cheers for the most delightful book I read this year, an atlas of imaginary lands
