At Hyde Brothers Books in Fort Wayne, Indiana, in the fall of 2001, I found a first American edition hardback of Christopher Dawson’s seminal 1942 book, The Judgment of Nations, published by Sheed and Ward. Hyde Brothers, to this very day, remains my all-time favorite used bookstore, and I can state with absolute certainly that the discovery of the Judgement of Nations—especially after conversations with Gleaves Whitney and Winston—changed my entire world and outlook upon it. I spent my Thanksgiving break that fall reading and contemplating every aspect of that book—from its sentence structures to its arguments to its implications for academic writing. I can also state with certainty that Sam Hyde, the owner of that glorious Fort Wayne bookstore, knows his stuff.
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2019/03/on-loving-bookstores-bradley-birzer.html

Reflections on the Psalms – Kindle edition by C. S. Lewis. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading Reflections on the Psalms.
— Read on www.amazon.com/Reflections-Psalms-C-S-Lewis-ebook/dp/B01EFM8NOS/ref=sr_1_16

Though not advertised, a number of C.S. Lewis’s books on Kindle are incredibly cheap today. I just spent about $50 trying to complete my collection. Enjoy.

When it comes to the saints, the power of their stories is rooted in their mysterious interiority. One of the most haunting poems in The Hanging God is “Some Will Remember You,” which is addressed to Edith Stein/St. Teresa Benedicta. Born to a German Jewish family, Stein was a brilliant philosopher who converted to Catholicism in 1922 and joined the Carmelites after reading St. Teresa of Avila’s autobiography: “The interior mountain beckoned you to climb, / The floors of the self-darkened room first creaked. / You wrote out what you saw and then sought stillness.” The Nazis later killed Stein at Auschwitz: “After the smoke, bones left forgotten, / Your jotted notes shut in a metal trunk, / As others bore reprisals and arrests, / Your thought lived in the study of a priest.” The second section of the poem begins: “In evil times and aftertimes, in times / When all the stubbled fields of action smolder, / Bowed heads can’t help but make their patient study / Of how the person worlds.” It goes on to depict a young Karol Wojtyła sitting in his wired room behind the Iron Curtain reading Stein’s words aloud “for all / The stashed and sensitive microphones to hear. / In those times, your words, carried on the quiet, / Fostered his own. Thought, act, and judging person, / The self in solitude revealing God, / Clicked like the murdered signal of your voice / Across a telegraph and moved his hand.” She becomes “A sainted sign / Named Edith Stein” whose mysterious love and fortitude nourished by the contemplative life contrasts sharply with the reductionist ideologies of the twentieth century.
— Read on kirkcenter.org/reviews/an-unflinching-theological-aesthetic/

Every schoolboy learns that Franklin Roosevelt cured the Great Depression with his New Deal programs. This is false, as libertarians well know. But it’s still
— Read on tomwoods.com/ep-1353-the-disastrous-new-deal/

My personal letters, though, are another story. Between 1982 and, roughly, 2002, I wrote thousands upon thousands of personal letters. In those letters, I really learned (at least as far as I know) the craft of writing. Those letters contained everything from experienced moments and hikes, to philosophical discussions, to book reviews, to bizarre fictional stories (blades of grass would bizarrely spring to life and have discussions with dandelions), to album analyses, to worries and frustrations. Many of those letters I typed out, but an equal number I wrote out long hand. Looking back almost two decades after writing so many personal letters, I can see how much of a life line those were for me during my teens, 20s, and early 30s. While much of that personal element transferred to emails and social media (I’m certainly not proud of this), the philosophical elements all went into writing for web or publication.
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2019/03/on-loving-writing-bradley-birzer.html

Rather than keep motorists away, however, the moniker piqued curiosity—thanks in part to the Nevada Commission on Tourism. The public relations director at the time saw an opportunity in the article and released a Highway 50 survival guide the same month the Life article came out, rewarding visitors to the area with a certificate of survival signed by the governor. Highway signs touting the qualifier went up along the route at the same time, and it graduated from opinion to slogan.
— Read on www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/destinations/north-america/united-states/nevada/pictures-loneliest-road-america-route-50/

Sharing the winter experience with other people can also help cultivate the imagination needed to relish the short days and long nights of winter. One of my most precious memories is spending a week in remote northern Manitoba with my family and some friends in the deep winter in a cabin with no heat, electricity, or plumbing. Although that may sound cold and remote, we were actually in constant contact with fire. Cooking, bathing, heating our rooms, and illuminating our evenings all required building fires and maintaining them constantly. This kept us all busy, and when we weren’t building fires, we were gathered around them, reading, drawing, telling stories, or playing fierce games of Canasta. The nights we spent next to the frozen lake were illuminated by the stars and Aurora Borealis, unpolluted by any artificial light, and the sobering thrill of finding actual wolf tracks near our cabin still haunts me.
— Read on verilymag.com/

From an incredible former Hillsdale student, Margaret Handel.

Despite the colony’s short lifespan, Dearfield was one of the most successful African-American communities in Colorado. “Dearfield was a farming success and a model for black farming communities around the country and was taken down, not by mismanagement or ignorance, but by the dust storms,” Junne said.
— Read on www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/inside-dearfield-colorado-ghost-town-was-once-bustling-all-black-n975716

This is a critical story in American history. Discrimination against blacks, of course, was rampant and heinous. But, the frontier allowed for fascinating freedoms and autonomy.

Remember when conservatives used to be antiwar, opposed centralized power, and actually wanted to eliminate government agencies rather than just take them over?
— Read on tomwoods.com/ep-1350-remember-when-conservatives-didnt-make-you-pull-your-hair-out/

Competitors such as Spotify are making investments to creep closer to Apple. In the meantime, Apple seems to be doing not much at all.
— Read on www.macworld.com/article/3345577/apple-dominates-the-podcast-market-but-for-how-long.html