At a time when the threat of authoritarianism is rising, Democrats have a duty to make crystal clear to voters what is at stake in the November elections.
In Andrew Holleran’s novels, the inescapable narrowness of his world is transcended and given poetic resonance by his close and steady attention to pain and loneliness.
Giant study of ancient pottery and DNA challenges common evolutionary explanation for lactase persistence
A small marine isopod plays a role in fertilizing red seaweed, according to a new report that presents evidence of animal-mediated “pollination” in the marine environment. Read that study and more this week in Science: https://fcld.ly/fhhe8ba
Ewen Callaway News 27 Jul 2022 – Dual action of ketamine confines addiction liabilityExperiments in mice show that although ketamine has positive reinforcement properties, which are driven by its action on the dopamine system, it does not induce the synaptic plasticity that is typically observed with addiction.
Our new issue is now online, featuring Fredric Jameson on Ben Pastor, @LalehKhalili on oil, money and democracy, John Lanchester on Wirecard, Andrew O’Hagan on Dolly Parton, @davies_will on the seductions of declinism and a cover by Alexander Gorlizki: http://lrb.co.uk
Excitingly, scientists say that alternative universes are allowed by physics. We find out about the leading multiverse theories, and establish whether they could harbour an alternate version of you.
The TLS (Times Literary Supplement) for July 29, 2022 – @TheTLS, featuring @billmckibben on the future of farming; Bart van Es on Shakespeare’s life and sources; @profrhodrilewis on the sixteenth-century mind; @soniafaleiro on Geetanjali Shree; @mary_leng on straw men – and more.
The Battle of Stalingrad began in August 1942, subjecting its residents to months of living hell. But few doubted that the city was worth defending; its significance to the Soviet project made it too important to abandon.
After nearly 60 years as a hotel, this former home of the poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson has been triumphantly restored as a house museum. John Goodall reports; photography by Paul Highnam.
On January 21, 1884, the poet laureate Alfred Tennyson was elevated to the peerage as Baron of Aldworth, Surrey, and of Freshwater on the Isle of Wight. As the editor of The Complete Peerage (1896) primly commented when recording this exceptional accolade, ‘the assumption of two places in different counties (more especially when the estate possessed is inconsiderable), cannot be commended’. Tennyson, however, would not have cared. Indeed, he had refused the offer of baronetcy four times and was only finally persuaded to accept it by his friend, the then Prime Minister, William Gladstone.
Tennyson chose this unusual title because — unconventionally for the period — he had houses in both places that he considered to be homes. Aldworth, which he generally occupied in the summer months, was a retreat from his house at Freshwater. This latter building, known as Farringford, was sold by the family in the 1940s and thereafter became a hotel. Returned back into private ownership in 2007, it has now undergone a renaissance at the hands of a Tennyson scholar, who has turned it into both a home and a house museum to the poet.
In the years immediately following his marriage in 1850, Tennyson and his wife, Emily, actively searched for a place to live. They heard from friends about a family house at Freshwater, on the north-western extreme of the Isle of Wight. Following a slightly depressing first viewing by Tennyson — then aged 44 — the couple came back together. An account of their visit in November 1853 is given in Emily’s journal. Travelling by train to Brockenhurst — where the railway line then ended — they caught an omnibus to Lymington and crossed on a still evening from the mainland in a rowing boat.
Emily was delighted by the house, which enjoyed an expansive prospect along almost the whole Hampshire coastline, and ‘looking from the drawing-room window, thought “I must have that view”, and so I said to him when alone. So accordingly we agreed… to take the place furnished for a time on trial with the option of purchasing’.
August 2022
Boomers Daily 