Education and Class-ism

I don't know which is more disheartening: the fact that the author thought this article was necessary, the fact that he just now figured this out, or the fact that he still comes across as pompous (one of the good things about going to a 'mediocre school' "is that it teaches you to relate to stupid people"). I often felt like people at our beloved alma matter acted like they were above "working class" people, and I'm positive that some of Jennie's colleagues at Rutgers thought they were better than people with less scholarly education. One of things I'm most grateful for in my life is that I'm equally at ease among blue collar, white collar, no collar people, etc... (I'm not so at ease among billionaires, but I don't run into them that often). I count that as some of the best education I ever received.

Happy Birthday Mr. Hopkins

Glory be to God for dappled things--
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced--fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise Him.

Lullaby for Lucia

Fleet Foxes
"White Winter Hymnal"

Just a little older than Lucia, the five-piece Fleet Foxes released their first full-length album on the 3rd of June, but they have already become the critics' little darlings with their self-styled "baroque harmonic pop." If you like this particular track, download it at Pitchfork. The video, which is at least as clever as the melody, is directed by the lead vocalist's brother, Sean. Oh, and thanks to Lauren, who found it first.

Sweet dreams, little one.

The Current Face of Film

See them both. Really.

More Happiness

Today I left the library with nearly four feet of books. Free books.

This morning one of my professors had arranged for us to meet in one of the smart classrooms on the library's lower level. After class, as I came up the stairs, I stumbled upon a long table just as two young aides were beginning to set out several carts of books. Apparently just leftover donations, most of the books had never even been cataloged. And they were just giving them away. I was particularly pleased to pick up The Poetry of Robert Frost, a complete collection of all eleven books, and the Selected Poems of John Crowe Ransom. Also, a couple in my stack bear a surname quite important to the literary history of Sewanee, and I wonder if they once belonged to a certain Andrew Lytle.

English Major Happiness

OK, I should not admit to getting too excited about these things. But I think the new Penguin book cover for Walter Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction is awesome. (This is the front cover, not the spine.)