Morning in Washington, Iowa, which is where I was last week, instead of sending this newsletter.
Hey y'all!
Over the 11 years I have been sending these letters, I have linked to things about Lloyd Khan at least three times according to a search of my admittedly incomplete archives. Lloyd is what my people would call a character.
He’s 91 years old, and is still full of life. The last time I linked to him was in 2024, when he went on a solo cross-country drive across Mexico at the age of 88. He’s 91 now and still skateboards, and is in training for a cross-country race.
The first link below is a ~20 minute video of Lloyd being interviewed and shadowed. The whole thing is amazing, but there is a point at the end where the woman interviewing him asks is he has any regrets, and he says yes – he hates he waited until 65 to learn how to skateboard. He wishes he had learned when he was 5.
Wendell Berry died on August 31st. I only became aware of his work some 15 years ago.
Like most good things in my life, I have my friend Brian to thank for introducing me to his work. At the time, I was not living a life conducive to my discovering new poetry. This newsletter has changed all of that, but this was in the before times. Brian and I were having one of those wide-ranging conversations you can have with someone with whom you are completely at ease. He quoted the Mad Farmer poem, and was shocked when I didn’t recognize it.
It’s hard to say why you don’t know a thing everyone else knows. On Threads, I have seen folks since his death say they had no idea who he was, but now they have read Hannah Coulter or Jayber Crow and they wish he had been on their radar sooner. My first reaction is shock that they did not know about him – and then I remember that I too, was late to the game.
I am mostly self-educated. While there are things I am literally a subject-matter expert on, there are also huge gaps in my knowledge, and sometimes, when I discover one of those gaps, I am filled with regret, for example, for all the years I did not know about the poetry of Wendell Berry.
It has been said that the best time to plant a fruit tree was 10 years ago, but the second best time is now. So, if you have a favorite poet or writer or musician you wish more people knew about, hit reply and tell me about them. If we get enough, I will make a list and share it in a future newsletter.
Five Beautiful Things
This video of 91 year old Lloyd Khan – author, builder, skateboarder, body boarder and all around excellent human – is very much worth the 20 minutes to watch it.
15 years ago, Abu Bilal built a wall in front of his bookcase, hiding the library from Syria’s former Asad regime. In this video, you see him tearing down the wall. This solution was brilliant. I don’t have enough knowledge to comment on the political situation, but I am always a fan of protecting books from those who would destroy them. (More context here)
The Homestead Diorama in Gettysburg Pennsylvania is like many military museums, filled with dioramas depicting the various battles. But at the Homestead, all the soldiers in the dioramas are cats.
I love discovering new (to me, anyway) digitized archives. Like I just learned that Cornell University has all of the issues of Harper’s Bazaar from 1867-1900 digitized at high resolution, and you can browse away to your heart’s content.
With Wendell Berry’s death, lots of his stuff is being posted on the internet. Here is one I had not seen before, called How To Be a Poet (to remind myself). There is an option to hear him read it, which I highly recommend. One cool thing about this poem is it contains a line he is often cited for, and which I have used countless times in sermons. I just didn’t know the work it came from: There are no unsacred places; / there are only sacred places / and desecrated places.
In Case You Missed It
The most clicked link last issue was this video of the highest ever resolution images of the surface of the Sun.
I have a new podcast episode up, with a story form my childhood that Dolly Parton’s death reminded me of.
On my blog, I had a core memory triggered by a sound. I think, sometimes, about all the sounds we don’t hear anymore. Like busy signals. Or mechanical telephone ringers.
In the opening essay, I link to Amazon for two different books. I want to take this opportunity to remind you that I do not share affiliate links in this newsletter, because my members pay to make this letter possible.
Thank you for reading! For 11 years this one-man labor of love has remained ad-free, AI-free, and financially free for everyone because of the generosity of my reader patrons. If you already support my work: I appreciate you more than you know. You can support this work by buying a book, sharing this link with your social networks, forwarding this email to a friend, by becoming a paid member or just buying me a cup of coffee. If you have links to share, questions to ask or just want to say hi, just hit reply. I read al my emails, and try hard to respond. Take care, HH |