Helluva week down here in Austin, Texas. Eclipse followed by a hailstorm. TGIF.
Here are 10 things I thought were worth sharing:
Standard Ebooks is “a volunteer-driven project that produces new editions of public domain ebooks that are lovingly formatted, open source, free of U.S. copyright restrictions, and free of cost.” (A couple of short favorites to get your started: P.T. Barnum’s The Art of Money Getting, Laozi’s Tao Te Ching, and Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.)
A short documentary: A Room Alive! explores Lynda Barry’s Comics Room at UW-Madison and the artistic community it has fostered. (I think Lynda would dig the title of Dmitry Samarov’s forthcoming book: Making Pictures is How I Talk to the World.)
“You are having a midlife crisis. It's fine.” This week’s mid-life crisis reading led me to the Hindu concept of ashramas, or the four stages of life: the student, the householder, the forest dweller and the homeless renouncer.
“My dream is to fly over Silicon Valley in a huge old WWII-era plane and air drop thousands of copies of Ernest Becker’s THE DENIAL OF DEATH.” My pal Matt on a forthcoming documentary inspired by the work of Ernest Becker, All Illusions Must Be Broken.
An interview with the true star of Curb Your Enthusiasm, JB Smoove.
A great question on Twitter: “Who are the funniest poets?” The replies included many of my favorites: Frank O’Hara, James Tate, Stevie Smith, Bill Knott, David Berman, Mark Strand, Kenneth Koch, and, of course, Mary Ruefle.
Eye candy for the Show Your Work! files: Magnum Darkroom Prints “reveal an analog history — how depth and layers are accentuated through the printing process… and the magic of the darkroom.” (h/t to Meanwhile, which also featured this excellent Lego/Kallax hack.)
Ear candy: My son got me into the work of Daniel Rosenfeld, aka C418, who made all the music for the massively popular video game Minecraft. I didn’t realize you can buy physical editions of the Volume Alpha and Volume Beta soundtracks — they would be a very cool gift for a young person starting a vinyl collection, and also a gateway drug to other electronic/ambient artists like Aphex Twin. (I’ve been listening to Syro a bunch, and Sunday is Avril 14th!)
The best news in Austin this week: Athena’s owlets have hatched! I highly recommend scrubbing through her live feed. In fact, the whole Cornell Lab Bird Cams YouTube is full of owlet activity. (Our owl boxes are occupied by squirrels this season. So it goes.)
More good news that will not be news to you if you regularly read this newsletter: “Working With Your Hands Is Good for Your Brain.” (See my recent missives: “Handmind is heartwork,” “Making things with your own hands,” and “Thinking outside of your head.”)
Thanks for reading this hand-rolled, algorithm-free, completely reader-supported publication. The best way to support my work is to buy my books and become a paid subscriber:
xoxo,
Austin
PS. I’m still drawing snails:
Oh thank you for sharing Standard Ebooks! I find typesetting to be a very pleasant way of spending time, having done it for binding fanfiction, and love to see a place where I might volunteer to do it more.
Thanks for the link to the A Room Alive doc. Spending a little time with Lynda Barry and all of her creative energy and generosity, even if it's only through video, is a gift. And I love how different yet simpatico she and Jeff Butler are in what they can offer their students. What a classroom!