It should come as no surprise that I will not be endorsing Donald Trump this year.

Former Vice President Mike Pence, speaking on Fox News, March 15, 2024

Highly recommended: Damon Linker, Exploring the Sources of Biden’s Struggles (likely paywall).

Finished reading Jessica Hooten Wilson, Walker Percy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and the Search for Influence. 📚

Reading Francis Spufford, Cahokia Jazz. 📚

Hagia Sophia Classical Academy has been a major claimant on my time and resources over the last 8 years or so, in large part because my grandchildren were attending. I first learned of it from an Ancient Faith Radio interview, and now there’s an updated interview, should such things be of interest.

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Improbably, I’m reading Jessica Hooten Wilson, Walker Percy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and the Search for Influence. 📚 I’ve met and chatted with Jessica IRL, and she writes quite well, so this seems like good preparation to re-read Walker Percy.

Coming back from an 8 point halftime deficit on the road at #12 Illinois, #2 Purdue wins by 6, securing the outright conference championship for the second year in a row. Great conference, great game, two very different halves. I’m a happy camper.

I think I may have achieved flashes of insight here. March 5, 2024 – Tipsy Teetotaler ن

O, Be still my beating heart! This changes everything, doesn’t it? Taylor Swift and Emily Dickinson Are Related: EXCLUSIVE

[I]t was a perfectly defensible position to hold that Trump should be disqualified. What was indefensible was the air of swaggering certainty that permeated so many of those takes. … self-evident. Common sense. Obvious. Indisputable. Automatic.

Damon Linker

Today’s Doonesbury cartoon knocked the ball out of the park.

I was afraid this would be another Banksy type graffiti artist. I really dislike grafitti.

Not at all. Sheer whimsical delight. Meet Frankey, the Street Artist Delighting Amsterdam - The New York Times (shared link, no paywall)

Finished Martin Gurri, The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium. 📚

A fascinating analysis of how we got polarized (the internet made all emperors’ clothes disappear) and what it will take for things to settle down. Recommended.

An idea for a drinking game, if you don’t want to live to see the next president: take a drink any time someone says “future of democracy” in the lead-up to November.

Nellie Bowles

Piers Morgan did a long interview with John Mearsheimer. Bad news: So deep is my antipathy to Morgan that I don’t dare watch it for fear of throwing my computer across the room. Good news: I think I’ve understood Mearsheimer’s insights fairly well already.

My friend Terry Cowan (Friend? Sure. I narrowly missed meeting him IRL once), a history teacher and obsessive traveler in Georgia, has a masterful summary of the situation in Ukraine.

We have been sorely misled by ill-informed officials and war profiteers.

Finished reading Allan C. Carlson, Third Ways: How Bulgarian Greens, Swedish Housewives, and Beer-Swilling Englishmen Created Family-Centered Economies–and Why They Disappeared. 📚A helpful introduction to third ways that should inspire us still today (even if one of the implied two ways is gone).

Bless, O Lord, all these prayerful ascetics, who cense the slumbering world with their life like incense.

St. Nicolai Velemirovich, Prayers by the Lake, number LXXVI.

Venting

We do things differently in the Hoosier State.

Near Whitestown, 3 children were buried in the mid-19th century near what’s now a state highway. Cars repeatedly knock down the tombstones.

But fear not! As solemnly reported on TV news, their ancestors are going to get the graves moved into a nearby cemetery. One of the self-identified ancestors even appeared on camera, and looked awfully good for someone 200 or more years old.

Is this a form of dyslexia? Spoonerism?

Lest I forget that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is a nasty piece of work, there’s Religion Clause: Texas AG Seeks to Liquidate Catholic Agency Providing Services to Migrants

Any social medium where a guy with the handle “Turd Flinging Monkey” is an influencer with 80,000 followers is not a place I’d care to hang around. The Anti-Family Right by Matthew Schmitz.

(And don’t get me started on BAP)

My main blog is the Tipsy Teetotaler, http://intellectualoid.com.