Saturday Good Reads

This week (on Sept. 9), Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II became the longest reigning British monarch, surpassing the previous record held by Queen Victoria. A wonderful video shows her evolution from childhood to today.

All those stories we keep seeing in the newspaper about the decline and demise of college English departments? Turns out they’re mostly true. And this is a tragedy for American literature – and for our society.

And we had Marilynne Robinson on fear, Jeremy Black on the Magna Carta, good poetry, beautiful and thought-provoking photographs, and a trip from Chicago to rural Iowa.

Photography

Flowers – Tim Good at Photography by Tiwago.

Olive Street Survivor, Western Downtown – Chris Naffziger at St. Louis Patina.

Poetry

Day to Day Utters Speech – Jerry Barnett at Gerald the Writer.

Tide – Megan Willome.

Thomas Lynch – D.S. Martin at Kingdom Poets.

Refuge on the Island of Lesbos – Maureen Doallas at Writing Without Paper.

Culture and History

Variant Readings – Gabriel Said Reynolds at The Times Literary Supplement.

Liberty’s Charter: On the special significance of the Magna Carta for Americans – Jeremy Black at The New Criterion.

Fear – Marilynne Robinson at The New York Review of Books.

The English Department’s Willful Self-Destruction – Jay Schalin at the John William Opoe Center.

Communication, in the country (part 1) – David Murray at Writing Boots.

Faith

Why You Might Just Have to Quit Your Job – David Rupert at Red-Letter Believers.

When a Something Happened Moment Invites Us to Ask What – Eileen Knowles at The Scenic Route.

Good Ol’ Words: Member – Winn Collier.

Work

Stripping Away the Magic and Make-Believe from Our Vocations – Vincent Bacote at the Institute for Faith, Work & Economics

Writing

For When Writing is Hard – Mick Silva.

The Longest Reigning British Monarch

Painting: The Mother and Sister of the Artist, oil on canvas by Berthe Morisot (1869/1870); National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.