I first saw what was then the almost-brand-new Museum of London in 1983. It had recently opened in the Barbican Centre, north of St. Paul’s Cathedral. I still have a souvenir I purchased – a box of matches depicting the Great Fire of 1666. The building is an unusual, rounded design, with an open below-ground space you see as you walk to the entry. I never wondered what might be behind that opened space, but Spitalfields Life has the fascinating story.
As I write this, Russian troops have occupied the Ukrainian nuclear power plant after shelling it and hitting one of its six nuclear reactors. And you think to yourself, what colossal stupidity is this? The Western news media is full of stories about the war – from the actual battle fronts to the seizures of the yachts of the Russian oligarchs (the media love that word). Chris Martin at Terms of Service points out what war can become in our internet-connected world – pieces of compelling content.
Songs and poems have been part of life in Scandinavia for thousands of years. The country we know today as Finland didn’t see the beginnings of its own written language until the mid-1500s. In 1832, a Finnish doctor began to collect the songs he hear while caring for some thousands of rural patients, a collection that eventually was published as the Kalevala. As Adam Sedia at the Society of Classical Poets writes, that collection of songs and poems built a nation.
More Good Reads
Poetry
Beneath the Tide and Other Pacific Northwest Shoreline Poems – James Tweedie at Society of Classical Poets.
Beyond the Lines: Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” – David Gosselin at The Imaginative Conservative.
The Coucal’s Call – poem by Joe Spring at Joe Spring Writes.
Look Up Psalm 19 – Jerry Barrett at Gerald the Writer.
Faith
Rushing into the Vacuum – Greg Doles at Chasing Light.
What is “Progressive” Christianity? – Michael Kruger at Canon Fodder.
Songbirds Fly at Night – Paul Twiss at Tabletalk.
The Overlooked Virtue of Gentleness – Jeremy Walker at Banner of Truth.
How to Pray for the Church in Wartime – Jesse Johnson at The Cripplegate.
Writing and Literature
The Crisis That Nearly Cost Charles Dickens His Career – Louis Menand at The New Yorker.
Great Sinners: Dostoevsky, my father, and me – Wen Stephenson at The Baffler.
Life and Culture
Justin Trudeau & the Misuse of Words – Hans Boersma via Rod Dreher at The American Conservative.
British Stuff
Charles Spurgeon’s Londoners – Spitalfields Life.
American Stuff
The Invasion of Ukraine and the U.S. Civil War: Comparative Watersheds in Portraying War – Neil Chatelain at Emerging Civil War.
Pass the Promise – Sandra McCracken (Keith & Kristyn Getty)
Painting: Woman Reading by the Harbor, oil on canvas by James Tissot (1836-1902).
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