Lidless Links (Undying Umbrellabird* Edition)

Some things I stumbled across lately or not so lately.

Whoever’s behind Kicks Condor is definitely more into blogging than I am–with a level of seriousness I just can’t muster. I appreciate the energy behind this deliriously visually expressive site. I’d be happy to see some of that early 2000s blog energy come back though!

Kicks Condor has this cool tool called Fraidy Cat for keeping track of a bunch of stuff (blogs, twitter, instagram, etc) in once place. Me, I just use Netnewswire (have been since its beginning), but I’ll give Fraidy Cat a whirl.

Communion of Saints is a 77 track album (it almost needs some other word…) of songs that commemorate 77 of the canonized saints. Haunting and mesmerizing. (I’ve been streaming it. I’m on track 39, Jessica Way – Daughter Of Light (St Philomena)). I’m mostly just impressed with the scope and execution of this project. (Found on The Last Blog.)

“Stab a Book, the Book Won’t Die” by Craig Mod. As a bibliophile, I always enjoy reading what Craig has to say about books and the book industry. Looking at things, historically, from the perspective of the book can lend some intriguing insights, as this essay does. “A printed book is an object over which no third party has agency once in your possession.” Contrast this with [fill in the blank with a modern technological contrivance, such as a smartphone].

Related to the above: “Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction” by Mairead Small Stead. For me, reading books was often a distraction from other things, so it’s weird to have so many distractions now from reading books. Beautifully put: “The gift of reading, the gift of any encounter with art, is that this time spent doesn’t leave me when I lift my eyes from the book in my lap: it lingers, for a minute or a day.”

Sometimes I recall books and then can’t remember their titles. I find this deeply frustrating, but sometimes I manage to track them down, like Stephen Elliot’s book Happy Baby. I saw him read from this book at Powell’s Books a long, long time ago.

This visual essay about maps on Lapham’s Quarterly is beautiful and worth checking out.

That’s all for today.

* I found it on this list of animals that start with U.