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"In early 2015, the 10,000-entry Oxford children’s dictionary dropped around fifty words related to nature — words like fern, willow, and starling — in favor of terms like broadband and cut and paste, some of the world’s most prominent authors composed an open letter of protest and alarm at this impoverishment of children’s vocabulary and its consequent diminishment of children’s belonging to and with the natural world. Among them was one of the great nature writers of our time: Robert Macfarlane....Troubled by this loss of vital and vitalizing language, MacFarlane teamed up with illustrator and children’s book author Jackie Morris, who had reached out to him to write an introduction for a sort of “wild dictionary” she wanted to create as a counterpoint to Oxford’s erasure. Instead, Macfarlane envisioned something greater. The Lost Words: A Spell Book (public library) was born" . Read more at the Marginalian

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (1821 – 1881), sometimes transliterated as Dostoyevsky, was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist and journalist. He is regarded by many literary critics as one of the greatest novelists in all of world literature, as many of his works are considered highly influential masterpieces. His most acclaimed novels include Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Demons (1872), and The Brothers Karamazov

"Language is an instrument of great precision and poignancy — our best tool for telling each other what the world is and what we are, for conveying the blueness of blue and the wonder of being alive. But it is also a thing of great pliancy and creativity — a living reminder that how we name things changes what we see, changes the seer" .....Read more at the Marginalian

"A symbolic moment of peace, grace, and humility amidst one of humanity’s most violent and disgraceful events".
"In December of 1914, a series of grassroots, unofficial ceasefires took hold of the Western Front in the heat of WWI. On Christmas, soldiers from an estimated 100,000 British and German troops began to exchange seasonal greetings and sing songs across the trenches",........ Continue Reading

Karl Ove Knausgaard, Norwegian writer, born in Oslo, Norway in 1968. His first book, a 1998 novel tilted , Ute av verden (“Out of the World”), became the first debut novel to win the Norwegian Critics’ Prize. Knausgaard’s second book, titled A Time to Every Purpose Under Heaven, (also published as A Time for Everything). His six volume series, autobiographical novel, Min kamp (My Strugle), published starting in 2009 became a best seller in Norway and its English-language publication gathered a large following.

Source:  Karl Ove Knausgaard, Min kamp 1

The Room was written October 7, 2021
the Room 2 follows.

A Comment by Loy

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Loy • 11/15/2023 at 08:58PM • Like 1 Profile

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"A human being is a living constellation of contradictions, mostly opaque to itself. “Inward secret creatures,” Iris Murdoch called us in reckoning with the blind spots of our self-knowledge"... More at The Marginalian ➜

"There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”

The quote is from David Foster Wallace 2005 commencement speech to the graduating class at Kenyon College. You can see the  Speech Video or you can read the full transcription

If nothing else, Wallace speech is timeless, telling us about "the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:  This is Water"

In 2015, Time Magazine called Wallace speech the Greatest Commencement Speech of All Time and highlighted 5 Takeaways

David Wallace (1962 - 2008) was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and university professor of English and creative writing. Wallace's 1996 novel "Infinite Jest " was cited by Time magazine as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005. His posthumous novel, "The Pale King" (2011), was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2012. The Los Angeles Times's David Ulin called Wallace "one of the most influential and innovative writers of the last twenty years". Wallace grew up in Illinois and attended Amherst College. He taught English at Emerson College, Illinois State University, and Pomona College. After struggling with depression for many years, he died by suicide in 2008, at age 46.

Voltaire - (1694-1778)  François-Marie Arouet, known by his nom de plume Voltaire. was a French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher famous for his wit, his attacks on the established Catholic Church, and his advocacy of freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and separation of church and state. He was one of the greatest of all French writers.

Stendhal,  (1783 – 1842), Marie-Henri Beyle known by his nom de plume Stendhal, was a 19th-century French writer. He is highly regarded for the acute analysis of his characters' psychology and considered one of the early and foremost practitioners of realism. Among his novels novels are Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black, 1830) and La Chartreuse de Parme (The Charterhouse of Parma, 1839) A self-proclaimed egotist, he coined the same characteristic in his characters' "Beylism". 

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