Word of the Day
Manichean (adj., man-ih-KEY-un)
A black-and-white perspective that believes the world breaks down into good and evil. If you feel differently, you're helping them win.
Gif of the Day
FootballBlake BortlesLaughingNervousYeah, we can't believe it eitherAffixing dentures?
Link of the Day
Marilynne Robinson - Imaginatino & Community
Marilynne Robinson is a brilliant author, one equally capable of writing terrific fiction and sharp-eyed essays. In Commonweal Magazine, she does both, examining the role that imagination (and fiction) plays in shaping community. It's a longer essay but well worth chewing on. Here's a short excerpt:
When we condescend, when we act consistently with a sense of the character of people in general which demeans them, we impoverish them and ourselves, and preclude our having a part in the creation of the highest wealth, the testimony to the mysterious beauty of life we all value in psalms and tragedies and epics and meditations, in short stories and novels. In the same way we diminish the worth of the institutions of society—law, journalism, education, and religion as well—when we forget respect and love for the imagined other, the man or woman or child we will never know, who will take the good from these institutions that we invest in them, or who will be harmed or disheartened because our institutions are warped by meagerness and cynicism.
You can read the whole thing at Commonweal.
WritingMarilynne RobinsonCommunityImaginationThough we do not see him, you love himBrothers from another mother?