EASY READER: I’m pretty sure the Arena Stage production of At Home at the Zoo is about as good as it could be. Not entirely–the actress who plays Peter’s wife can’t quite get past how obtrusively written her dialogue is–but mostly this is as good a production as I can imagine. It’s also recognizably Albee. He wrote the second act as The Zoo Story, his first play. Decades later he wrote the backstory, which serves as Act One. First act... Read more

ECSTASY AS SOLACE: I really liked this quote from Fr. Alexander Schmemann, found via Wesley Hill: Secularism is a religion because it has a faith, it has its own eschatology and its own ethics. And it “works” and it “helps.” Quite frankly, if “help” were the criterion, one would have to admit that life-centered secularism helps actually more than religion. To compete with it, religion has to present itself as “adjustment to life,” “counselling,” “enrichment,” it has to be publicized... Read more

BYZANTINE FRESCOES OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHERS: Via TKB. Read more

The town happens to be asleep right now, the mayor has problems with his heart and lies spread-eagled in his bed, his dentures in the glass of water beside him; in musty rooms omnipotent fathers sleep in nightshirts beside their wives. In the woods above town animals are waking. The actor is saying: Sad to say, you don’t know real vodka. The real pure stuff turns everything you see a blue color.—The Rebels Read more

KITCHEN ADVENTURES: SPREAD THE LOVE. I had a ridiculously tasty lunch the other day. Anyway, ingredients (use the amount that seems right to you): sourdough bread, garlic, fresh ginger, crimini mushrooms (button and shiitake would also work), cream cheese, olive oil, and a bottled sesame-ginger sauce I bought at the Whole Foods corporate-charity sale. What I did: Finely chopped the garlic, peeled and finely chopped the ginger, and finely chopped the mushrooms. Heated olive oil in a pot. Put a... Read more

STILLTASTY. Very useful website for letting you know how far past the sell-by date you can keep all manner of foodstuffs. Via YumSugar. Read more

“Please be so gracious as to remember that the last days are here.”–Mr. Zakarka, in Sándor Márai, The Rebels, tr. George Szirtes Read more

I WOULD NEVER SAY “I TOLD YOU SO,” OH, BUT TONY… I TOLD YOU SO: Some aphorisms of Don Colacho, as I discover a blog. (…For the theological ones, I feel duty-bound to note that Christianity complicates everybody’s aphoristic wisdom a.k.a. self-image, so if you want to argue with an aphorism it might be better to sit and let it steep in you and figure out the ways in which it might be true. Or to put it another way,... Read more

RIOT CABARET: Really enjoying Sublimity Now’s guide to acts similar to Tom Waits. Skewing farther toward the cabaret genre, I think she should try Agnes Bernelle (“It Was Me,” maybe?) and the sublime Marc Almond. Especially liked “The Man on the Burning Tightrope”– He could have been somebodyHe could have been somebody elseIt could have been so much worse. –and this quick refrain from “Old-Fashioned Morphine”– Sister, don’t get worried,Sister, don’t get worried,Sister, don’t get worried,Because the world is almost... Read more

The so highly acclaimed “dominion of man over nature” turned out to be merely an enormous capability to kill.–Nicolás Gómez Dávila, Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 474 I can’t believe I have evaded this author for so long. Huge thanks to Sublimity Now for the link. Read more