PicoBlog

I was dancing around with my 2 year-old the other day, and I put on the Pogues If I Should Fall From Grace With God. He careened around the room with me as the title track played, stopping only to pick out instruments he was hearing: “Dada, is that a violin? Is that an accordion? Dada, is that a whistle? Is that a cello?” (Answers: no, yes, yes, and definitely no, why would you even say that).

Have you visited the archive of all the genre hits I’ve covered on The Lost Songs Project? You can find it right here. Paid subscribers have access to everything! Peak: #2 on the country chart (#48 on the Hot 100) Streams: 8.5 million Here are some of the instruments featured on Keith Urban’s “I Told You So:” uilleann pipes (or Irish bagpipes), bouzouki (or Greek banjo), mandolin, slide guitar, and ganjo (which is a hybrid guitar and banjo).

Welcome to Making History, a newsletter about how historians make history. And how do historians really make history these days? By wasting their time on the internet. Here’s a few glimpses from this week at where all those hours went. To subscribe, go here. It’s free! And you thought Tim Barker’s reviews were mean. The talk of the profession this week is a review by one untenured professor of another untenured professor’s book, published by Harvard University Press, on the hot topic of the Chinese state bureaucracy.

Once upon a time, back in my journalism career, I recall having an article I’d written positively cited by a United States government agency devoted to clear speech, without jargon. I remember this now because of a LinkedIn post that crossed my feed: My typical reaction to being told to stop using this or that phrase is to double down on the phrase, unless it is proven harmful. True to form, I am not convinced that the words “dumbing down” are disrespectful or insulting and if anyone takes offense to it, I’d tell them to lighten up.

Reader James Pothen writes in with an interesting question: “How does personality interplay with masks?” “I'm thinking of superheroes as one example: Batman lets Bruce Wayne express his rage, Spider-Man lets nebbish Peter Parker be a quippy gymnast. But I've also heard that masks are a way for some people to become someone or something else.” This one is tricky because in some fields, “masking” is generally considered to be a bad thing.

Joey Baron is a treasure, a fount of wisdom and experience, a restless, uncompromising inventor with the highest musical standards. I last saw him in New York at Birdland in the summer of 2022, playing with Marc Copland, Randy Brecker, Billy Drewes, and Drew Gress, a beautiful night of music. Throughout the set, Joey swung and smiled, subtly shading the music by coaxing countless tiny gradations of tone from his cymbals and drums.

Meet our next creator, JoAnna Novak: JoAnna Novak Age: 38 Kid: Almost 4 Location: Illinois Vocation: Writer Links: JoAnna NovakHappy September and happy almost fall! I ended up taking a longer break from publishing The Creators Forum than I had planned. Partly for good reasons—I took an actual vacation that replaced computers with family and travel—and partly for not-so-good reasons—our house was damaged in a storm and we were living out of a hotel for a spell.

The following letter is to “Ari,” who came across my theological letters online and reached out to me. He shared with me his appreciation for my documentary, “Becoming Truly Human,” and mentioned that he had been dialoguing with a friend about my post On Free Will. The discussion concerned the ramifications for “apokatastasis,” by which “Ari” meant universal salvation. This prompted me to reply by discussing some unfortunate conflations I’ve noticed in contemporary dialogue about universal salvation generally and apokatastasis specifically.

First, I want to make it clear that this post isn’t an attack on men in any way but rather a calling out of a certain kind of enabling we do societally for the dangerously insecure. Women are just as capable of jealousy, therapyspeak and ultimatums that may or may not alleviate their own insecurities. And I was very recently in a situation where a man I was very close to as a friend had to cut me off because his girlfriend made him choose between us.