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DAIRIN SOTO 大林宗套 Died on the twenty-seventh day of the first month, 1568 at the age of eighty-nine Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedMy whole life long I've sharpened my sword And now, face to face with death I unsheathe it, and lo— The blade is broken— Alas!DOKYO ETAN 道鏡慧端 Died on the sixth day of the tenth month, 1721 at the age of eighty

On 21 December 1495, the great survivor of the Wars of the Roses, ‘the high and mighty prince’ Jasper Tudor, ‘brother and uncle of kings’, died peacefully in his own bed at Thornbury Castle. It is a testament to his incredible resilience that he did so a wealthy royal duke in his sixties, escaping death on the chopping block or in battle like most of his contemporaries. Few lives contain the drama of Jasper’s, which I recount in full in my upcoming Tudor family biography, ‘The Son of Prophecy: The Rise of Henry Tudor (now available for pre-order)’.

After three years of living in the Twin Cities, I finally had the chance last month to experience the natural beauty of Minnesota's forested north, where cabin culture around its 10,000 lakes reigns supreme. After a summer plagued by triple-digit temperatures, extreme drought, and a steady stream of smoke from the Canadian wildfires, I longed for a week of quiet delights surrounded by a vast natural landscape. My adopted home state didn't let me down.

The following article appeared in the March 18, 2024, edition of The Charlotte Ledger, an e-newsletter with smart and original local news for Charlotte. We offer free and paid subscription plans. More info here. U.S. Rep. Jeff Jackson of Charlotte apologized on social media on Saturday for his explanation of his vote supporting the ban or sale of TikTok, following two days of being “roasted” by TikTok users who called him a hypocrite.

"To empower a person, you show them what to do, you teach them how to do it, then you enlist them in the doing while you fade stupidly into the background. A person once empowered is a person forever empowered." — Jeff Johnson Jeff Johnson may not be a familiar name to running’s Twitter-and-podcast set, but he is known among old-timers as one of the sport’s most quietly influential and enduring figures.

If you enjoy reading this Substack and feel as if you are learning from it please consider becoming a paid subscriber. We began this Substack several years ago by talking about Jeffrey Epstein, a figure I knew from my stint working for Alan Dershowitz in high school. The tragedy of life is that you can never quite be reflective when you’re living it but now nearly twenty years later I can put it together.

Photo Credit: Unsplash Today’s post is a (free!) bonus because Tuesday’s wasn’t part of this planned series. But this woman is the reason I named the series “The Women Who Saved Christmas.” It’s a play on a sermon by my favorite Old Testament scholar and retired pastor, Dale Ralph Davis. You should listen to him. He’s amazing. It comes from 2 Kings 11:1-3: Now when Athaliah the mother of Ahaziah saw that her son was dead, she arose and destroyed all the royal family.

Screenwriter Diablo Cody experienced one of the fastest cases of backlash ever recorded. Her debut script, 2007’s Juno, won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay and put her on the map in a major way. But Cody’s hyper-cool style rankled (er, I may have contributed to the rankling) and just two years later her second produced film script, Jennifer’s Body, was almost doomed to be shat upon as a result. Cody’s self-consciously cool dialogue in the early going of Juno is just so easy to hate and mock, you can easily miss the fact that it exits the film pretty quickly, and the majority of the movie is actually a lot of fun.

Jenny’s Substack - Let's art together By Jenny Lawson (thebloggess) Join me as I share a drawing a week for one year in an attempt to rekindle the joy of creating. Includes random musings on inspiration, motivation and how to keep pouring from your creative cup even when it feels like there's a hole in it. ncG1vNJzZmirpZfAta3CpGWcp51kjbW0xJujqJ%2BXmsC0