on the beginning and middle of the meritocratic era: Last fall, Toby Young did something ironic. Toby is the son of Michael Young, the British sociologist and Labour life peer whose 1958 satire The Rise of the Meritocracy has been credited with coining the term. Toby has become an education reformer in his own right, as founder of the West London Free School, after a celebrated career as a journalist and memoirist (How to Lose Friends and Alienate People). In... Read more
The BBC has this great series, “Playing Shakespeare,” in which John Barton leads members of the Royal Shakespeare Company in a series of supposedly-somewhat-spontaneous classes about playing Shakespeare’s verse. Herein a few notes to whet your appetite, and then a rant. John Barton is hilarious, first of all. He is perpetually swathed in a baggy sweater, all slumping shoulders and bushy eyebrows, his hair piling frowsily on his head like he forgot it there. And then this glorious rich voice... Read more
for the African-American Intellectual History Society: The Christmas season also gave way to the largest slave rebellion in the history of the British Caribbean known as the Christmas Rebellion (or the Baptist War). During ten days in late December 1831 into January 1832, nearly 60,000 slaves (about 20% of the enslaved population of 300,000) led by the black Baptist preacher Samuel Sharpe went on strike and rebelled against plantation owners, demanding freedom and higher wages. According to Michael Craton’s Testing... Read more
posts: Tymara Walker posts on youtube (thanks to all for sending links): “This is the original recording of the woman (well… me ) singing in Union Station in early December. I’m celebrating new life, life after being a DV survivor, now I’m just victorious! Enjoy your holiday” more. Read more
covers a lot of ground quickly: [Baltimoreans] have good reason to be afraid. Some places are using “artwashing” — the practice of drumming up the art scene in a neighborhood or building to drive out lower-income residents in preparation for higher-income tenants — to advance gentrification. Indeed, much of New Urbanism hinges on “reviving” blighted areas of a city with more upwardly mobile residents, with long-term residents simply not included at least and deliberately opposed at worst. A neighborhood not... Read more
Or, What did Brexit look like in 1988? Months ago, in the halcyon days of May, I was browsing the cheap shelves at Second Story when I came upon Bluff Your Way in the EEC. This is part of the Bluffer’s Guide series, overgrown pamphlets designed to teach ’80s people how to pretend they understand things like Philosophy, Accountancy, Feminism, Jazz, Japan, The Occult, and “Hi-Fi” (??). I grabbed this thing and a saint-of-the-day guide from I think the early... Read more
for the University Bookman. Papist polemics, monks with painted eyelids, “apostolic viragoes” and more! You might expect a book called The English Way: Studies in English Sanctity from Bede to Newman, compiled under the reign of King George V, to rustle through the fingers like a necklace of finely-wrought gold. You might expect serenity, monumentality, harmony: a peaceable parade of right little, tight little saints. You might expect that, anyway, if you don’t remember much about English history. The English... Read more
Realized everybody’s doing best-of-books in time for Christmas buying. I’ll do a complete best-of post at the end of the year, but I’ll be spending the rest of December gnawing through Alan Moore’s vast, fascinating Jerusalem (review forthcoming), so I can be pretty sure this is my best-books list for the year. Fiction and lesser kinds of book mix here freely. Counting down, basically in order of how much they affected me personally: 10. Charles Williams, Descent into Hell. 9.... Read more
Hey y’all. The pregnancy center where I volunteer has this excellent newish program of church referrals. Basically, we see a lot of women who were raised Christian or have some definite interest in finding a church, but who have a ton of worries and responsibilities to juggle so it’s easy for the church hunt to get endlessly postponed. So we ask them a few questions about what they’re looking for, and try to connect them with someone who can accompany... Read more
If you’re interested in present-day portrayals of Vatican II-era Catholicism, it’s pretty fascinating. If you’re interested in haunted Ouija boards, not so much: I watched Ouija: Origin of Evil last night, and it was a pretty good flick. But I’m still a little confused about the Ouija board’s motivation. I watched the movie because of this article about Blumhouse, a horror-centered production company making “nuanced dramas about families, class, and morality — but instead of divorce or dysfunction, they’re typically dealing with possessed... Read more
Eve Tushnet
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